


Subduction

by gebora



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-30
Updated: 2018-06-21
Packaged: 2018-09-13 08:45:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 57
Words: 456,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9115681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gebora/pseuds/gebora
Summary: After an explosion rips through the upper ring of Ba Sing Se, Mako is presumed dead. Left to bear the weight of the loss, Bolin begins a desperate search to find those responsible, but before he can uncover the truth, the very people for whom he is searching attack. The failed attempt on Bolin's life leaves him  broken and changed. Now Bolin must lead Team Avatar toward the answers while working to escape a spiral of self-destruction that threatens to tear them all apart.





	1. The Burial

**Author's Note:**

> 10/4/2017 -- No new chapter this week, as I've been spending the last couple days editing and fixing continuity. For today, I've re-uploaded all 50 chapters to reflect these changes. More new content next week. 
> 
> 7/18/2017 -- Heavily updated again! Went back through 15 chapters for edits in spelling, grammar, and continuity. Woot.
> 
> 6/26/2017 -- Heavily updated as of today. Went through all the old notes I'd written to fix errors, update changes, and the like. Major things haven't changed, but there are added minor details and corrections throughout.

            It wasn’t until long after the chaos ended that Korra realized how wrong things truly were, when Bolin stood wide-eyed and silent before a plain platinum box atop a bare earth dais. He had been there for a while, long enough for the silence to grow awkward, groping for words that wouldn't come despite hours of preparation. Korra would have said he looked afraid, but she had seen Bolin afraid before and this was not the same. Now, he seemed tired and vacant.

            “I don’t know what to say,” Bolin uttered with great effort, and he looked toward the floor with an expression that begged forgiveness. “I can’t do this. I’m sorry,” he repeated quietly, and then he stepped down from the platform. He sat in the only empty chair in the front row, folded his hands listlessly in his lap, and stared at his feet.

            Korra wanted to go to him more than anything, but the moment she made her move Asami, seated at her side, told her, "No," in a firm but gentle tone.

            “Leave him be. He needs space right now.”

            The ceremony didn't last long after that. The small crowd filed out of the funeral hall past the platinum box, placing their hands on it, stopping to bow before it, some without acknowledging it at all. Bolin sat silent the whole while with his eyes on the floor, accepting the occasional pat on the shoulder or condolence as the procession rolled past to timid strains of “Leaves from the Vine.” After a time the place was empty but for close friends and family, who exchanged uncertain looks before standing to offer their assistance.

            Asami stood and offered a hand to Korra, and together they approached their bereaved friend. Korra knelt before him and took his hands in hers, but he didn’t move. For a long moment she looked at him, struck by the emptiness on his face. Everyone had expected Bolin to be sad, but no one had expected this.

            Bolin had never been quiet. He'd never been reserved and he'd never been so serious. It was as though some time in the last week he'd withdrawn into an entirely different person.

            “Are you ready?” she asked quietly.

            Bolin nodded and accepted her help to his feet.

            “The airbenders are going to move him to the island for burial,” Asami said. She hugged him gently. “Under Aang’s monument like we agreed.”

            With another exchange of looks, Korra hooked her arm around Bolin's elbow and ushered him from the room with as much dignity as she could. Asami followed immediately behind, and at a respectable distance behind her, Tenzin and his family airlifted the platinum box from its dais with utmost care.

            It had been almost a week since an explosion rocked Ba Sing Se’s upper ring, ruining its inaugural election and killing more than sixty. Mako had been there with Prince Wu, attending to the very last of his duties as monarchical bodyguard, and had apparently been enveloped by the blast. While Wu had made it out and now rested unconscious but undoubtedly alive in a Republic City hospital, Mako’s mangled body had been brought home and packed away in a box.

            Lin had been the one to identify the body, and being the closest city official to the family, she was the one who notified them of the loss. She brought them--Korra, Asami, and Bolin--into a small metal room at the precinct without warning, and the news had been laid bare. And while Korra and Asami looked to each other for confirmation that what they had heard was correct Bolin stood resolute and stone faced.

            Korra remembered the sound of the shaking breath he'd taken before saying, “What?” without inflection, and when Lin repeated herself he simply stared, stupefied.

            At once Korra moved to his side, grasped his hand, and asked if he was all right. But he didn’t look to her at all, didn’t even acknowledge that she had touched him, and Korra couldn't be certain if he was angry or confused. His thick brows knit, his eyes narrowed, and the longer she stared at him the more she noticed a pulsing tendon in his firmly set jaw.

            “I want to see him,” Bolin said in a voice so sharp that Korra jumped.

            For a beat Lin seemed surprised, but she dared not argue with the look on Bolin’s face. “If you’re sure that’s what you want, kid,” she said quietly, and motioned for him to follow her.

            Bolin jerked his hand away from Korra and followed Beifong from the room. She and Asami lingered in stunned silence, exchanging glances full of mourning and doubt, and after a long, long time alone in the room they left. The next time Korra saw Bolin was that night when he unexpectedly arrived at Air Temple Island, Pabu in tow, with his earlier bluster conspicuously absent.

            “I’d like to stay the night here, please,” he said, eyes locked on the ground. “Will you get Tenzin, or ask him, or do whatever needs to be done? I’ll sleep outside if I need to, but I can’t go back home.”

            Korra pulled Bolin inside at once, and without so much as a word to Tenzin she escorted him to a room in the male dormitory, where he made his way to the bed and collapsed atop it. And once Pabu had jumped from his shoulder, he rolled away and remained utterly, eerily silent until Korra left.

            The day after the news came had been worse than the day before. Funeral arrangements had to be made before the remains deteriorated and the stink of rotting flesh could permeate the metal. Eulogies had to be written, and quickly. Korra offered to help, but Bolin adamantly refused to allow her into his room. Asami had the same bad luck. He'd barely spoken to them through the door. But when Pema brought an offering of steam buns and hot tea, Bolin relented. Korra imagined that it helped that Pema had threatened, very maternally, to break down the door if he didn't let her in. The two sat in the room for most of the morning and afternoon, and Pema emerged that night with a shrug and empty script.

            “He said he would think about what he wants to say,” she'd said. “Otherwise he doesn’t care about the ceremony, he just doesn’t want to take care of it himself. He mentioned we should contact his grandmother.”

            The third day, Tenzin and Pema worked with Yin to make preparations for the funeral. A modest number of invitations were extended beyond the boundaries of Republic City, and each recipient reported that he or she would attend.

            The fourth day saw the release of a message from the man who orchestrated the explosion, and the subsequent closing of all transport into and out of Republic City. Even Su Beifong and her family would be unable to attend the proceedings, and Tenzin reported the news through Bolin's door with increasing melancholy.

            The fifth day Bolin emerged with Pabu on his shoulder, and he sat on the pavilion stairs and watched Korra walking through her airbending forms. She offered for him to join her and blow off steam, but he waved her away with a dismissive, “No thanks.” When he stood to return inside not long thereafter, Pabu jumped from his shoulder and scampered to Korra. Pabu had remained with her ever since.

            The sixth day brought the funeral. Korra and Asami dressed together in their finest formal attire before providing Bolin with some assistance. He had obviously neglected himself in his grief, but after an hour he'd seemed ready to leave, or as ready as he was bound to be. Pabu rode in the Satomobile on his lap, licking absently at his hands, but when the party arrived at the hall Bolin had passed him off to Korra again. Then Bolin had taken his designated seat alone at the front of the hall and stared resolutely at the floor, flailed in his speech, and stared at the floor some more.

            The ride to Avatar Aang Memorial Island stretched in awkward silence from car to boat to car. Asami commented on the lovely ceremony and Korra heartily agreed--they hoped the conversation might spark some reaction, --but Bolin continued to thoroughly examine his dress shoes. Korra watched him the whole while, worried by his quiet.

            An armed escort led Korra, Asami, and Bolin to the plot where the tiny crowd waited, their heads bowed respectfully. The officiate, an aging and agitated man in dark green robes, said words that Korra didn't hear, and then motioned to Bolin. The silence grew awkward again.

            “Bo?” Korra prompted with a gentle touch to his elbow, and he looked to her with confusion. “The burial.”

            He looked at the box with some surprise, as if he hadn't noticed it being placed into a perfectly proportioned rectangular hole cut from the earth at Aang’s feet, in the shadow of the great white lotus upon which the immense statue stood. There was no way he could've heard the officiate ask if he wanted to partake in the burial ceremony. Bolin looked momentarily confused, but it seemed obvious to Korra: An earthbender could easily close a hole in the ground.

            Bolin shook his head sadly. "I can't."

            Korra looked to Asami, confused, and when Asami shrugged her own puzzlement, Korra turned back to Bolin. “What do you mean, you can’t?” she whispered. She had heard those words come out of him so often in the last days that they'd ceased to carry any meaning at all.

            He looked at her out of the corner of his eye, ashamed. “I can’t. I haven’t been able to bend for days,” he said, practically a whisper. "Please don't say anything."

            The request came as a shock, but Korra stepped forward at the official’s gesture, planted her right foot, and closed the grave with a strong sweep of her arms. The earth rumbled as if in protest, but the deed was done, and no one was any the wiser for Bolin’s apparent incompetence.

            After more words, the burial ceremony concluded and Korra and Asami stood beside Bolin and watched as he accepted comments, handshakes, and condolences without speaking in reply. Eventually the crowd was gone except Tenzin and the airbenders, Korra, Asami, and Bolin.

            Again, Korra prompted him hopefully. “Are you ready?”

            He shook his head. “No. I’ll follow along in a while. You guys go ahead without me.” He spoke evenly, his voice as blank as his face.

            “Are you sure?” asked Asami.

            But Tenzin had placed his hands firmly on Korra and Asami's shoulders and pulled them away before Bolin could answer, not that Korra was certain he'd say anything at all. As one, the group left him alone at the grave. Korra looked back many times as they went. She wasn’t sure what she was looking for.

            “Do you think he’ll be okay?” Asami asked generally as the group approached the airbender compound.

            Tenzin replied after a moment of thought. “This has come as a shock to all of us. I imagine that it will take time, but sooner or later things will balance out again.”

            Korra thought for a moment, the worry building in her stomach. She wanted to help, but she didn't know how, and now that Bolin had explained his bending block to her, the concern grew. “He told me he can’t earthbend,” she said to Tenzin. “He told me just now. He didn't want me to say anything, but he hasn’t been able to. I'm worried.”

            Tenzin shrugged. “Our bending is deeply connected to our spirit. A disturbance like this could easily disconnect the body and mind.”

            Korra patted Pabu on the head when he whined. It was as though he knew they were talking about Bolin, and he wanted to express his worry as well.

            Pema spoke next, as wisely as her husband. “Well, when I was helping him write the eulogy, Bolin seemed okay. He didn’t want to talk about much. I think he was more upset when he found out that Opal and the others couldn’t be here because of the travel restrictions. But he was never tearful or angry.”

            This was the part that had Korra worried. The news of Mako’s death had hit everyone except for Bolin like a train. Everyone except for Bolin had been openly mourning, crying, and meditating. Only once had he seemed particularly grief stricken, and that was when he asked to stay at the island. Since then, Bolin had been a blank slate no matter the circumstance. He'd locked himself up, hadn't come out to eat, and when he finally emerged he'd seemed to float around Air Temple Island like a ghost.

            “Dinner will be in an hour or so,” Pema said when the lot entered the airbender compound. “Please be on time.”

            Korra and Asami excused themselves to Korra's bedroom in the women’s dormitory, where they changed out of their formal attire and into their nightclothes. Then they sat and stared out of the west-facing window at the statue of Avatar Aang, all red and blue and orange in the sunset.

            “He reminds me of how you were,” Asami said at length as she stroked Pabu’s back, “after you were poisoned.”

            “That was different,” Korra replied. “I was wounded.”

            “So is he. Just different.”

            Korra swallowed her budding rage and sighed. “The funeral was a disaster.”

            Asami shook her head. “No, it was all right. Considering the problems everyone is having getting in and out of the city and the trouble we had booking everything on such short notice, I think things were fine. Mako probably would have thought it was funny, if he didn't think it was ridiculous.”

            “If I hear _Leaves from the Vine_ one more time I might throw up, though,” Korra said.

            Asami giggled. “Mako would have thrown up, too.”

            “He wouldn’t want us to be sad, would he?”

            Asami shrugged. “Who knows what he would have wanted. I don’t want to be sad, though, so I won't. There’s been too much of that going around lately between Mako, my dad, Kuvira, and all the fallout. It hasn't been that long.”

            Korra put her arm gently around Asami’s waist and heaved another great sigh.

            “It’s a nice place for him, don’t you think?” Asami asked. “All protected beneath the statue?”

            “Mako didn’t need to be protected,” Korra said, the edge of anger returned to her voice. “He needed to be away from that idiot Wu. If he hadn’t been there—“

            “He wanted to be there,” Asami interrupted. “It was his choice to return to his duty as bodyguard and he took it. No one could’ve foreseen what happened at the election.”

            “And nobody knows who did it, either, all we have to go on is that psychotic message they put in the paper!” Korra cried, frustrated. “I have trouble believing that it caught everyone completely off guard.”

            “It didn’t catch them off guard, or so I heard on the radio,” Asami replied. “I heard that there was a suspicious persons call put out before the attack that called forces to the lower ring. You know how people feel about the lower ring of Ba Sing Se--even with increased security they’re going to ramp up more there than in the upper ring. It happened when the police forces were separated.”

            “And I find it hard to believe that a firebender was burned alive.”

            Asami winced. “They’ll figure out who did it, and he’ll be punished,” was all the rebuttal she could offer, and even to her the words rang empty.

            It was well into dinnertime when Bolin returned to the compound. Without ceremony or introduction he took his place across from Korra at the dinner table, loosened the collar of his dress shirt, and began to eat slowly and wordlessly. This, too, had become common, and this, too, worried Korra. Never one for table manners, Bolin on a normal day would have cleared his plate in seconds. Now he did as much rearranging of the items as he did actual eating, and at every meal he'd been present for, he'd left at least half his food untouched.

            “You’re looking a little sick,” Pema said to him when he sat, and Bolin looked at her as if he didn’t understand. Then she stood and walked around the table to sit beside him. “Are you feeling okay?” She pressed her palm to his forehead in motherly fashion. “You’re pale.”

            But dry eyed, Korra noted. She had hoped he was staying at the grave to mourn finally, but all signs showed that he was still all pent up. It was so strange for him to be so quiet. Normally, Bolin wore his heart on his sleeve. He didn't hold back. Either there was nothing in him or he'd done a very good job disguising it.

            Bolin stared at his bowl of rice, untouched, and the stack of steamed vegetables that lay beside it. “I just need to eat something.”

            “When you’ve finished your dinner I’ll send an acolyte to your room with some tea and a cold compress.” Pema said, and then stood to retake her place at the table. “We can’t have you getting sick on us.”

            Once Pema had situated herself again, Korra cast a meaningful glance to Tenzin, and then jerked her head toward Bolin. Then, deliberately, she said, “I’d be happy if you’d come train with me tomorrow.” She'd tried to make herself sound bright and inviting. “Pabu would love to spend time with you.”

            “No, thanks,” Bolin replied shortly.

            Apparently Tenzin had understood Korra's gesticulating, because he cleared his throat to command the attention of the table. “It’s healthy to exercise during stressful times,” he said, picking up on Korra’s obvious lead. “And Pema is right that you’ve been looking ill. Maybe working with Korra will help take your mind off of things.”

            Bolin perked up, and the look he shot between Tenzin and Korra sent a cold streak up Korra's back. He'd never leveled such an intense look at her before. “You told him, didn’t you? That I can’t bend,” he said, more incredulous than angry. Then, without waiting for an answer, he stood. “Why would you do that? Why would you ever think that was a good idea?” With Korra sufficiently shamed, he turned on Tenzin. “I appreciate that you’re letting me stay in your house, but I don’t need any of your special airbender spirituality nonsense."

            Bolin marched out of the room and slammed the door behind him. An awkward quiet remained.

            Again, Tenzin cleared his throat. “That went well.”

            “Can I go to my room, too, daddy?” asked Ikki, and when Tenzin nodded his approval the airbender children left the table one by one.

            Korra felt horribly guilty as she sat there staring at the remnants of Bolin's dinner still on the table. She regretted that she'd said anything at all, and she hoped desperately that she hadn't set him back. He'd just now started coming out, he'd just now started talking to people: If he quit now, it would be all her fault for betraying his secret to Tenzin.

            “I’ll go talk to him,” Korra sighed. “I made him angry, it seems only right that I should calm him down. Come on, Pabs.”

            The fire ferret skittered up to rest on her shoulder.

            “Don’t wait up for me,” Korra said to Asami, and with a heavy lump in her stomach, she left.


	2. Acceptance

            Korra found Bolin already changed into his nightclothes and lying atop the covers with his back to the door. Upon entering the room Pabu scampered from her shoulder and curled up at the foot of the bed, but Bolin didn't turn. He didn't acknowledge the fact that she'd entered at all.

            The room was as much a disaster as could be expected for how few possessions he'd brought with him. His casual jacket was half under the bed; one shoe lay upturned near the door, the other in the opposite corner. He'd discarded his dress clothes haphazardly over a chair, and the tea and cold compress that Pema had promised sat disused on the bedside table. The tea had gone cold, and the compress dripped pathetically onto the floor.

            “I’m sorry,” Korra said without entering the room. “I shouldn’t have told anyone, I was just worried.”

            When Bolin didn’t respond, she approached the bed and looked down at him, afraid she would wake him from much needed sleep. But he was awake with his brow furrowed in anger, his hands folded beneath his face, jaw set again. She could see the tendon working as he ground his teeth in frustration. He seemed to be staring at some unknown point beyond the window like he was lost in thought somewhere out in the bright lights of Republic City. She sat on the edge of the bed and stayed quiet for a long time.

            “You would tell someone if you weren’t okay, wouldn’t you?” she asked at last. She wasn't sure what else to say. Everyone had been worried about him, but Bolin hadn't recognized any of it. He hadn't asked for any help outside of a place to stay.

            “What makes you think I wouldn’t?” Bolin snapped.

            “Well, the way you’ve been acting for the last week for a start,” Korra replied with just as much heat. She could match his temper easily. She could outdo his temper easily. “Everyone is worried about you, not just me and Asami. You won’t talk and you barely eat. You can’t bend!”

            “It’ll come back.”

            “Has this happened before?”

            “No.”

            Korra sighed. She wanted to ask how he could be so sure but all Bolin’s pretention seemed to have gone, faded with that last syllable, and his face had gone blank again. She couldn’t bring herself to rub his nose in false pride now. He never snapped at people like he'd just snapped at her, and Korra was left to wonder if the neutral, dead-eyed front he'd put on had all been for show.

            They were silent for a long time.

            “Will you lay with me for a while?” Bolin asked timidly, with the slightest nervous stammer. “Just for the company?”

            Korra nodded though he didn’t see it. She'd never judge him for something like that, even if he didn't know it. Korra knew firsthand that sometimes it just took some human contact to feel better. “Where do you want me?”

            He patted the bed in front of him, and Korra nestled in to the sound of Pabu’s agitated chittering. When she'd settled and stopped moving, Bolin draped his arm casually around her middle, cozied up behind her, and buried his forehead into the back of her neck. Within moments she felt a subtle shudder pass through him and warm wetness against her skin.

            “It’s not healthy to keep all this in,” she said gently. She patted his hand on her stomach lamely. What else could she do?

            Bolin shook his head, though whether it was in agreement or disagreement Korra didn’t know. “I think I’m just tired,” he said without the slightest waver in his voice. If he was indeed crying he was good at hiding it. “I haven’t slept.”

            Korra nodded. “You looked tired today.”

            “I am tired.”

            “Why not go to sleep?”

            Another shudder, but this time she felt his muscles tense in protest. Korra wondered if it was just a reflex, if such suppression came as second nature to boys. “I shouldn't have looked at him,” said Bolin in an anguished whisper. “I don’t know what I expected. Beifong warned me and tried to get me to reconsider, but I was stubborn and looked anyway, and now every time I close my eyes, that’s what I see. He was just a pile of meat--it didn’t look like him at all. And the smell...”

            Korra felt the corners of her eyes warming and closed them against unwanted tears. The description made her nauseous. She imagined what Mako had looked like, if he'd been laying on some kind of table, how much was left of his body and how much was just a burned and bloodied mess. “Do you want to meditate with me?”

            “No.”

            It wasn’t the answer she expected. It wasn't the answer she wanted. “Are you sure? It might help.”

            Bolin shook his head again, and this time Korra was certain that it was in disagreement. “I wish Opal had been here,” he said. “But at the same time I’m glad she wasn’t. I’d hate for her to see me like this.”

            “But it’s okay for me to see you like this?”

            “You’re the Avatar. It’s your job to help people.”

            Korra grimaced at the truth. Since the news broke she had relied heavily on her status as Avatar to keep herself grounded. When she'd returned from the precinct the day the news broke, she'd meditated for hours under the statue of Avatar Aang. She'd tried to convince herself that the Avatar's wasn’t the only spirit that reincarnated. She wanted to believe that Mako was being reborn, even if she didn’t truly know it. Deep in her heart was understanding that no matter how much she wanted to mourn and cry and wallow in the loss, she had to provide stability for her friends, particularly Bolin. And then he'd arrived on Air Temple Island looking so helpless, and she'd tried hard to stay firm for his sake. She couldn't lose her composure now.

            “I’m your _friend_ , so it’s my job to help _you_ ,” Korra corrected pointedly. “Don’t get the two things mixed up.”

            She felt a smile crack against the back of her neck and he hugged her tight against him. Then he shuddered again and Korra knew he couldn't hold it in much longer. When a pathetic whimper came out of him, Pabu perked his head up. He crawled up Korra’s leg, his soft footfalls tickling her skin, and then settled on the pillow above their heads with a soft whine.

            They lay that way for a long time, the comfortable silence interrupted occasionally by sobs let slip or a sharp intake of breath. Every once in a while Bolin would pull Korra closer, and sometimes he'd hug her so tight that she had to hold her breath. He held her so tight that it hurt. But eventually the crying stopped; Bolin's restlessness ceased, and his breath warmed Korra's neck in slow and steady intervals.

            He slept.

            Overcome, Korra cried until she joined him.

 

*****

 

            Next morning the male dormitory rang with cries of, “Girl in the boy’s room! Girl in the boy’s room!” and Bolin woke with a start. He could hear Meelo and Rohan running full tilt down the hallway with their voices echoing loud and clear through the compound, and Bolin felt self-conscious.

            It took him a minute to remember the night prior, how he'd fallen asleep with Pabu curled around the back of his neck and Korra in his arms. She felt comfortable and soft, and when she twitched beneath his hand he couldn't help a grin at the childish warming of his stomach. He'd never fallen asleep with anyone besides Opal before, and even then there wasn't much sleeping to be had. Even when they did sleep, the novelty of bedtime snuggling had worn off in favor of actually having a good night's rest.

            He closed his eyes and lay there for a while, until Korra stirred beneath his arm and gently removed his hand from her middle as though she believed him to still be sleeping.     He watched her sit up and stretch, and before she noticed he was awake, the door to his room slid open.

            “You were in here all night?” Bolin heard Pema ask the question with the slightest indignation.

            Korra nodded, then slid off the foot of the bed out of Bolin's sight. “He needed the company."

            Bolin appreciated that she hadn't disclosed any of the details of their night, not that those details were in any way shameful. Maybe she'd taken his anger to heart yesterday, when he'd snapped at her for telling Tenzin that he couldn't bend.

            “Well, he’s got a letter from Tenzin’s mother,” Pema continued. “And it’s getting close to noon.”

            “I’ll get him around. Is there breakfast?”

            “Lunch,” Pema replied. “I won’t tell Tenzin that you spent the night together, but I make no promises for the children.”

            Bolin heard Korra utter her thanks, and then the door closed again. She'd sounded a little ashamed, and that made the warmth in his stomach die. It was no big deal for her to have been there. It was no big deal for him to have had his arm around her. But for Bolin, it was a tiny snapshot of what could've been had he not found Opal.

            Korra shook him gently by the shoulder and seemed surprised when he looked up at her, like she hadn't expected him to be awake at all. He sat and stretched the same as she had, then patted Pabu on the head and rose.

            While he dressed, Korra made the bed, and he wondered about the letter Pema had mentioned. It was rare for anyone to hear from Katara, even Tenzin, so for Bolin to receive a note seemed oddly out of place. Still, he supposed that news of Mako’s death had spread fast and it seemed only right that letters of condolence should come in.

            “Pema said lunch will be ready soon,” Korra said as she slapped the pillow atop the freshly smoothed bedclothes. Then she turned and him with an obviously forced smile.

            He didn't say anything about it. She probably felt awkward having slept by him all night. With a sigh, he zipped his jacket, ruffled his hair, and motioned the okay for Pabu to resume his customary position. The fire ferret obliged with a chatter of satisfaction, and Bolin spoke as he patted Pabu on the head. “Thank you for staying with me.”

            “Don’t mention it.”

            “I won’t,” he said and shot a furtive glance Korra’s way. Then he steeled himself a bit, hardened his voice and said, “But please don’t say anything to anyone. And I mean that this time.”

            “Well they’re going to know I was in here,” Korra replied flippantly, “I guess Rohan and Meelo were screaming it all over the dormitory.”

            “That’s not what I mean," Bolin clarified, softer now. He felt a bit self-conscious now she was looking at him with a hard expression that matched his own. "I don’t want everyone knowing that I--“

            “That you cried?” Korra interrupted. “Honestly it would make people feel better if they knew, but if you don’t want me to tell anyone I won’t.”

            Bolin nodded. He really wanted to keep it to himself.

            “Lunch?” Korra prompted.

            Bolin nodded again and the two exited to the dining room. The rest had already gathered and were presently waiting for lunch to be served. All eyes turned toward the awkward pair as they took their respective seats. Bolin noted the agitated look that Asami leveled on Korra and the apologetic look Korra shot back. Then he noted Tenzin scanning the table with a particularly stinky eye over the top of the _Republic City Press_. He watched the exchange between Asami and Korra, who seemed to be trying to communicate in some subtle girl code, but then Tenzin's gaze came to rest, as benevolently as possible, on Bolin.

            “You’ve got a letter here,” he said and handed over a small square envelope. “It’s from my mother.”

            Bolin received the letter and examined it thoughtfully for a moment. Katara’s handwriting was artistic considering her age, and the address was scrawled in midnight blue ink: Bolin, care of Tenzin, Air Temple Island, Republic City. He'd never seen her writing before, and he wasn't sure why he was surprised by it. She'd always seemed like a refined lady.

            “She wasn’t sure of your address, so she sent it with another letter to me.”

            Bolin opened the envelope and read silently:

            _Dearest Bolin; I hope this note finds you in good health and spirit. I send my deepest regrets that I am unable to attend your brother’s funeral. However, I hope to do my part by offering an escape to you and your friends should you find you need spiritual guidance or rest in these troubled times. I would be happy to host all of you, and Tonraq and Senna have been desperate to see Korra besides. Please respond as you are able and I will make all the arrangements for lodgings when you arrive. If you are unable to come, please remember to take care of yourself in body and mind. I know what it’s like to lose a dear brother too soon. Yours most sincerely, Katara._

            When finished, Bolin folded the letter and looked dubiously to Tenzin. “She’s invited us to visit,” he said, “in case I need _spiritual guidance_.”

            “Did she?” Tenzin asked with interest, and Bolin nodded. “That’s not an invitation she extends lightly.”

            By this time air acolytes began ushering in plates of food from the kitchen, and the airbender children squealed happily over their lunches. Bolin didn't feel hungry. He didn't feel very happy anymore, either. Whatever exuberance he'd felt upon waking beside Korra had long since faded, overshadowed by the lingering grief over Mako.

            “Do you suppose you’ll take her up on the offer?” Tenzin continued as he folded the newspaper and tucked in to his meal. It didn't seem like he'd noticed Bolin's shift in mood. “It would be no trouble, I suppose, as long as Raiko would let us around the travel restriction. I imagine he’d be happy to be rid of us.”

            An acolyte sat a plate in front of Bolin, and he stared at it, trying to mask his immediate disgust. He recognized the food as some kind of tofu and vegetables and rice, but all he could see was brown mottled cubes splotched with red. Bolin felt nauseous, and instead of eating, he dropped his gaze to his hands folded in his lap. He fidgeted, unsure of what to do.

            “Are you all right?” Pema asked. “It’s just fried tofu. We thought you might need the protein. I thought you liked it.”

_It looks like Mako_ , he wanted to say, but instead he just stammered stupidly. It was all red and slimy, like the remnant patches of skin that had hung from the body. There had been so little left that Bolin hadn't even recognized it as Mako. It was just as he said: A lump of flesh that smelled like charred meat and blood. Mako's corpse had been a sight and a smell that Bolin knew he'd never be able to get out of his head.

            His stomach lurched and he covered his mouth with his hand. He felt suddenly lightheaded, and he dropped his elbow to the table to rest his forehead atop it.

            It seemed that Korra recognized the cause of his sudden nausea, because Bolin could see out of the corner of his eye how she reached deftly across the table to swap plates with him. When Bolin looked to her in thanks she offered no reply at all, but ate greedily instead. It seemed like she was trying to clear away the unappetizing food as quickly as possible, and Bolin appreciated that.

            Pema apologized for what she thought was a simple oversight. “I thought you liked fried tofu, I’m sorry,” she said, but she seemed heartened when Bolin tentatively ate the first of the conspicuously non-red vegetables on his new plate.

            Tenzin cleared his throat. “So, the letter?”

            “I want to go visit Gran-Gran,” said Jinora. “I think we ought to go,” she appealed to Bolin. “A vacation would do all of us good right now, and would get us out of helping rebuild the city for a while.”

            Bolin nearly choked. He had completely forgotten about the rebuilding of Republic City. It had only been a few weeks since Kuvira's enormous mech had ravaged the city. Three or four entire boroughs had been leveled, and more besides had been so heavily damaged that the buildings would have to be leveled and rebuilt.

            He had offered, perhaps stupidly, to assist with the effort. Earthbenders were being recruited in staggering numbers and wages had been so promising that he couldn’t refuse to help even if he didn’t need the money. Lin had offered him a particularly high pay grade, knowing his value as a lavabender. But then came the explosion and the news about Mako, and beneath that, all thoughts of work were forgotten.

            “I’d like to go, I think,” he said at length, “but I promised Beifong I would help with construction. I signed a private contract when the jobs opened.”

            Tenzin scoffed. It wasn't a reaction Bolin had been expecting out of him. “Lin will let you out of your contract, considering the circumstances. Otherwise I’m sure she’ll postpone its start date until you’re in better health.”

            Bolin looked to Asami and Korra, curious to know what they thought. Apparently over their earlier miscommunication, they both looked up at him.

            Asami beamed especially brightly. “I wouldn’t mind another vacation,” she said. “I think it'd be good to clear our minds a little.”

            Korra nodded as well, her mouth full. “It’d be nice to see my parents,” she said, muffled.

            Bolin looked to Tenzin and shrugged, then gestured for him to continue explaining the next steps. It seemed the matter had been settled: They'd be heading south. And while Bolin had never much liked the cold, the idea of getting away from the city and the stress was appealing.

            “I’ll speak with Raiko this afternoon and arrange our departure. Pema, if you’d be so kind as to phone Tonraq and Senna to let them know we’ll be on the way…”

            “Of course, dear.”

            Lunch finished and each went separate ways: Tenzin to the city to speak with President Raiko about travel restrictions; Pema to phone the Southern Water Tribe and inform them of their arrival; the children to do their chores; and Bolin followed Korra and Asami to the yard for Korra’s daily training.

            He settled, as usual, on the pavilion stairs, dropped his chin on his hand, and watched.

            “I still find it hard to believe you can’t bend,” Asami said as she dropped down beside him. She seemed to harbor no resentment toward Bolin for keeping Korra away the night prior, at least none that he could see. He found this a little surprising, but offered no response. Instead, he watched Korra display an acrobatic show of airbending with her face screwed up in concentration. “Have you tried?” Asami prompted. She touched his arm.

            “A little. It just doesn’t feel right.”

            “Well, why don’t you try again?” Asami picked up a loose, palm sized stone from the ground beside her and held it out with a smile. “Maybe things will be better today.”

            He took the stone and rolled it over in his hand for a while, uncertain of what to do with it. It felt familiar but cold. It felt disconnected.

            “Metalbend it.”

            Bolin looked at Asami, suddenly alert and insulted. “You know I can’t do that," he said angrily. There was little he hated more than being reminded of his inability to metalbend.

            “That’s not what I mean,” she said, laughing. Then she took his hands and positioned them left over right, palms facing each other. “When you tried to learn metalbending this was how they taught you to do it; a little bit at a time.”

            “Oh.” Bolin felt a bit stupid for jumping to conclusions. All she wanted him to do was to try reshaping the stone.

            With great concentration he flattened his right hand and flexed the fingers of his left. The stone shuddered a bit, but remained unchanged and resting even after several seconds of concentration. Bolin let out a great breath of frustration, tossed the stone aside, and dropped his hands to his lap.

            “It’s no use.”

            He looked up to see Korra watching them from the yard. He wondered how long ago she'd stopped her training and whether she'd seen him embarrassing himself. But then she sprang to action and shouted from afar.

            “Maybe you need some pressure under fire!” she called gleefully, and with a stomp and upward sweep of her arms raised a sizable block of earth from the ground. “Heads up!”

            The earth came rocketing toward Asami and Bolin with unexpected speed. Asami ducked, frantic, but Bolin played along. Why not give it a try? What could it hurt? Maybe it would help. Maybe it was just something in his mind that was blocking him out.

            Bolin threw up his hands as normal, as he had a million times before, ready to deflect the rock or catch it and throw it back as he might in a pro-bending arena. But the stone didn’t slow and didn’t change trajectory. He had barely enough time to cover his face with his arms before it bowled him over.

            He lay there on the steps for a second, stunned and reeling, a distinct sting on his left forearm. By the time he had righted himself and surveyed the damage, Korra was beside him with healing water in hand. “I’m so sorry,” she stammered. “I wasn’t thinking.”

            Bolin rolled up his sleeve and grimaced at the wound. The skin had split and already a red, swollen spot had begun to rise around it. All told it looked much worse than it actually felt, but Korra applied the water and worked it into the wound with care, and what pain there was eased.

            “Don’t worry about it. We all know I bend best under pressure,” he said, resigned.

            His attempt at levity wasn't lost on Korra or Asami, but he didn't feel any better for it. Bolin wondered how long it would be until he'd be back on point, until his joking and immature commentary made him feel better again.

            “I wouldn’t worry too much,” Asami said. She patted him placatingly on the back. “We’ll go visit Katara and she’ll get you sorted out.”

            Korra nodded her assent and removed the water from Bolin’s now injury-free arm. “She’s the best healer I’ve ever met. If anyone can fix you up it’s her.”

_But this isn’t an injury_ Bolin thought. _I’m just blocked_. Then he perked up and looked between his two friends. “That’s it,” he said with sudden clarity. “It’s like I’ve been chi blocked but it's not wearing off.”

“I’m sure she can fix it,” Korra repeated.

            Bolin, Korra, and Asami spent the afternoon together in leisure and took dinner in Bolin’s room in the male dormitory over a halfhearted game of Pai Sho. The girls helped him clean a bit, encouraged him to continue his attempts to bend, and offered what comfort they could when sudden waves of emotion washed over him. He hated himself for it, but they seemed not to judge him.

            Just after dark, Tenzin returned to the compound bearing the first good news anyone had heard in a week, and he entered Bolin's room without knocking to find them all seated on the bed, the Pai Sho board between them.

            “I spoke with both Raiko and Lin,” he said to the three, his voice quite official. “Raiko will allow us out of the city as long as we provide an itinerary, and he'll require us to have an escort out of Republic City boundaries.”

            Korra and Asami smiled wide and said as one, “Great!”

            Tenzin looked to Bolin. “And there was no question about your contract with Lin. She said you can do whatever you’d like until you feel ready, but when you come back she’s putting you straight to work.”

            “That sounds like Lin,” Bolin replied glumly.

            “We can leave as soon as tomorrow,” Tenzin continued. “Whenever you all are ready. We’ll take Oogi.”

            Then Tenzin left, and Korra and Asami practically buzzed with excitement. Bolin wished he felt the same way.

            “This is great!” Korra exclaimed brightly. “Bolin, you’re going to be healed by the best waterbender in the world!”

            Bolin's smile felt subdued, even to him. “It’s not really healing, I’m not hurt.”

            “Then you’re going to be receiving _spiritual guidance_ from the best healer in history!”

            Asami stood and looked out the window. “You get some rest here,” she said. “We’ll get your things packed and ready to go so we can leave as soon as possible, okay?”

            “There isn’t much to pack,” Bolin said quietly. He'd not packed very much to begin with. He hadn't expected to stay on the island for so long, but then, he hadn't expected Mako's death to hit him so hard.

            Asami grinned at him. “Then I guess it won’t take very long to get ready."

 

 

  



	3. Awake

            For innumerable hours a haze of semiconsciousness came and went in intervals without boundary. Horrifying dreams of the explosion at Ba Sing Se bled into a reality more empty and silent than pure oblivion. It was a reality that Mako did not care to cling to; he had neither the energy nor the focus to decide whether it was better to dream terrifying dreams or suffer a reality void of the senses. Often sleep overcame him without his knowledge.

            Periodically he would feel hands pressed against his skin, poking and prodding, tugging and scraping, but these feelings came without pain or discomfort. He believed them to be dreams or delirious hallucinations void of image or sound.

            Then all at once, Mako snapped back to pure and unfettered consciousness, opening his eyes to a world of absolute dark. He breathed deeply, fought rising anxiety, felt cold metal beneath his bare back, and strained to remember how he had gotten there. When he closed his eyes he could see the flash, the enormous fireball rolling out from Ba Sing Se’s crumbling royal palace, and then blackness. He recalled hearing screams, feeling overwhelming heat, Wu clinging desperately to his shirt as he tried futilely to bend the flames. His dreams had seeped into reality.

            Deep breaths quickened as terrible memories flooded into his mind. He could hear it all but could not recall seeing anything. And now all was cold and dark and noiseless: He was insulated. _They think I died_ , he thought. _They’ve buried me. They’ve buried me alive. No, no, no._

            Frantically, Mako called out, “Help me! Help! Get me out of here! Bolin!”

            His heart jumped to his throat and he choked on the words, suddenly aware of a pounding pressure in his head, a sharp pain in his temples. He felt the vibration of speech in his throat, felt his mouth moving to form words but the sound never reached his ears. He squinted his eyes, gingerly touched his closed lids, and opened them to blackness again. He screamed, terrified.

            “Someone help me!” He cried, and even as his voice broke from exertion he felt only vague vibrations. “Get me out of here! Bolin!”

            Hot tears burned his cheeks, and he thought to punch out against the confines of the casket, but to what end? He was a firebender, not an earthbender. If they had buried him he would never be able to get out. If he firebent against the metal it would serve only to roast him alive.

_No, no, no, it can’t end like this. This can’t be right. Bolin wouldn’t have buried me. This can’t be right, no, no, no._

            Mako tried to call out again but the words caught fast. The tears were too thick; he was breathing too hard. Panic. His head swam; he swooned. Panic. He was panting; hyperventilating. _This can’t be. They wouldn’t have buried me. I’m not dead!_

            He sobbed and desperately punched forward—perhaps if he pounded hard enough against the box someone would hear him—but his fist caught only air and he paused, his chest heaving. He drew an enormous breath, held it, and reached cautiously upward. He waved his arms about and felt cold air against his bare skin.

_I’m not in a box,_ he thought. _Mausoleum? No. No, there’s not a mausoleum that would take me. Where am I?_

            “Help!” His horror was now compounded by confusion. “Somebody help me!”

            He pushed himself to sit and cried out against searing pain in his palms. _Burned_ , he thought. _I burned myself_. The sensation was familiar: He had burned himself many times before as a budding firebender. The pain was negotiable. The fear was insurmountable. He screamed again.

            Suddenly there were hands on him—many pairs of frigid, bony, clinical hands—and Mako flailed against them in panic. They pressed against his chest and arms and shoulders with such force that he had no choice but to lie back, and they held him there with so much pressure it hurt.

            “Help me!” he screamed. “Help me!”

            Then he felt a finger on his chest that began to slowly trace letters. C-A-L-M. C-A-L-M. S-A-F-E. S-A-F-E. The pattern repeated over and over and over until Mako recognized the words, but he could not stop the adrenaline.

            “Where am I? Who are you? Where is Bolin? Help me! Why can’t I—“ He slapped the hands away, frustrated.

            He felt a prick in his shoulder and grimaced. The letters continued to trace icily against his chest. C-A-L-M. S-A-F-E. He tried to argue but his head felt fuzzy. He felt suddenly faint.

 

*****

 

            When next Mako woke he was reclined in a warm and comfortable chair, and was not surrounded by pitch darkness. When he opened his eyes he saw shapes; blurred blobs of color that moved around before him, but of which he could discern no detail. He found small comfort that he could hear better than he could see, though his left ear pounded and rang with tinnitus. His right picked up fuzzy voices that sounded far away and muffled. He could just barely identify the sound of his own rasped breathing.

            A brown figure stopped before him and bent low. Mako knew at once that this was a person, dark haired and light skinned, and the closer the person got to him the more detail he could see.

            “Can you hear me?” said the man, for it was indeed a man, and Mako could just barely understand the words he spoke. The man smelled of fire.

            Mako nodded timidly.

            “Can you see me?”

            “Not very well,” Mako replied. “Who are you?”

            Quicker than Mako could react, the figure struck him. A swift backhand took him across the face and Mako tasted blood.

            “You won’t ask questions,” said the figure, bending low again. “You will _answer_ questions.”

            Mako blinked against the pain and sat confused, waiting.

            “Are you a firebender?”

            He nodded.

            “Are you able to bend lightning?”

            He nodded again.

            “Are you a combustion bender?”

            “No.”

            The man took pause. Mako noted that the figure’s head turned slightly. “Are you loyal to Firelord Izumi or any member of the Fire Nation cabinet?”

            “No,” Mako said and he tilted his head to the right. The ringing in his left was painful. He winced. “I’m from Republic City.”

            Another slap.

            “Do you pledge your loyalty to the Democratic Society of Firebenders and swear allegiance to its leader on pain of death?”

            “What?” Mako said, disoriented and uncertain that he had heard the words correctly. “The what?”

            “Do you pledge your loyalty to the Democratic Society of Firebenders and swear allegiance to its leader?”

            “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

            The figure looked again to the side and issued an order to another. “Kill him.”

            “Wait!” Mako cried. “Wait! Yes! Yes!”

            The figure looked Mako straight in the face. “Very good.”

            “Please,” Mako begged, “I need to know...”

            The figure didn’t slap him again, which Mako took as permission to press on.

            “Where am I? What happened?”

            “We saved you,” said the man. “We liberated you from the servitude of the Earth King, Wu.”

            “What? Why can’t I hear? Why can’t I see?”

            “Unfortunate byproducts of the explosion that freed you,” the figure replied, louder and more slowly this time, as if he had just been made aware of this issue. “Your eyesight will return in time, as you’ve no doubt noticed. Your hearing may not recover beyond what it has.”

            Stunned, Mako sat. He squinted at the figure and tried to focus on the images.

            “I am Guan, leader of the Society and orchestrator of the liberation of firebenders in Ba Sing Se.”

            Mako’s stomach dropped.

            “You’ll rest until your eyesight is fully restored. Until then, you will continue to be confined to a room in our compound.”

            “How long has it been? How long have I been unconscious?”

            “That’s not your concern. We’ll speak again.”

            The blob of a man walked away, followed by a contingent of other blobs. Mako watched them to the door, or what he imagined was the door through the shapeless blurs. His stomach squeezed in knots and a bead of sweat dripped down his forehead. A damp cloth wiped it away. Mako recoiled.

            “Shush,” said a woman beside him, and when Mako looked it appeared that she was comfortably seated. “You don’t need to be afraid. My name is Toru, I’ve been your caretaker.”

            Mako squinted. The woman was dark haired and dark skinned, but he could not see much else. She dipped the towel into a basin atop a table beside her and then continued dabbing at his face even as he stared. She appeared to be smiling politely.

            “Forgive Guan,” she said loudly, leaning toward him. “He can be abrasive.”

            “Where am I?” Mako still heard his own voice as muffled and fuzzy.

            “Unfortunately, I’m unable to answer your questions. I heard them all just now; I’ve been here the whole time. I’m sorry but I’ll need to ask you a few things for the records while you’re awake and aware. What is your name?”

            “Why should I answer your questions if you won’t answer mine?”

            Toru sighed. “I’m sorry you had to come to us under such terrible circumstances, but there were other firebenders that needed liberation from Ba Sing Se. Chaos was a necessity. I promise that all of your questions will be answered in due time, but not until we know you can be trusted and will act as a supportive member of our society.”

            “What society?”

            “What is your name?”

            Rage bubbled in Mako’s stomach. “What society?” he demanded, more sternly this time.

            “Guan told you. We are the Democratic Society of Firebenders. Now, tell me your name. It’s only fair, as I told you mine.”

            “Mako.”

            Toru scribbled something on a pad of paper on the table. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mako. Where are you from?”

            “You said you heard the whole conversation,” he said, irritated. “I’m from Republic City.”

            “Your vocation?”

            “What?”

            She leaned closer to him and spoke louder. “What do you do for a living, Mako? What is your job?”

            His face screwed up with confusion. “I’m a cop,” he stammered. She continued scribbling, and his eyes shot futilely to the paper. “I’m a detective.”

            “For the Republic City force?”

            He nodded, eyes still on the paper. He couldn’t read the writing. Toru paused and looked to him, then back to her work. It seemed she was reading from a script and filling in blanks when required.  This was no casual conversation.

            “Why were you guarding Earth King Wu?”

            “Because that’s the job I was assigned by my boss.”

            “Do you owe allegiance to Earth King Wu?”

            “What?” This time the question was asked not because Mako didn’t hear, but because he did not understand. “He’s not the King any more. He stepped down. We were just overseeing the elections. And I’m not part of any nation. I’m from Republic City—it’s its own separate…” Mako groped for the word, “republic.”

            “Do you have a family, Mako? Wife or children, brothers, sisters, mother and father?”

            “Do I have to answer?”

            Toru nodded.

            “I have a brother,” Mako said at length. Thinking about Bolin was strangely painful. How long had he been away? Had word got back to Republic City that he had survived? Did anyone know he had survived?

            “Mako?” Toru pressed. “Are you all right?”

            His gaze had drifted to the floor. He blinked hard as a sharp pain shot behind his eyes. “Fine.”

            “What is your brother’s name and vocation?”

            “I don’t want to talk to you about him.”

            “You’ve got to answer the questions, Mako. You want to make a good first impression, don’t you? If you don’t answer the questions Guan will doubt your loyalty to the society.”

            Mako stood, irate. “I don’t care about the stupid society!” He had started at a shout, but by the end of his statement his voice had diminished to a sickly whisper. He felt his blood pressure plummeting. His legs trembled and he collapsed back into the chair. His skin felt clammy.

            “What is your brother’s name and vocation,” Toru repeated clinically, with another dab to Mako’s forehead.

            “Bolin,” he said, resigned. “He’s…” Mako stopped to think. Bolin had done so many things—pro bending, movers, begging, stealing, nothing—Mako couldn’t honestly say what he was doing now, but there was the pending expansion of Republic City. “He’ll be working on construction.”

            “Is he a bender?”

            “Earthbender.”

            Toru seemed to perk up, and she looked at Mako thoughtfully. “Your names seem familiar, I think I’ve heard of you on the radio.”

            “We did a stint in pro bending.”

            “The Fire Ferrets!” she exclaimed happily. “Your team had a heck of a season a few years back, didn’t you? With the Avatar? Excellent run, it was. A lot of people were sad to see you all retire.”

            Uncertain what to say, Mako uttered, “Thanks,” under his breath.

            “Does Bolin owe allegiance to Earth King Wu, Firelord Izumi, or either water tribe?”

            “No.” Mako regretted that things had gotten back to business so quickly.

            “Does he know where you went with Earth King Wu?”

            “He knows I went to Ba Sing Se, if that’s what you mean. And stop calling him _Earth King Wu_. He’s not the King anymore.”

            “Any other relations I should know about?”

            Mako thought briefly of his grandmother and cousins, still in Republic City, but he didn’t feel close enough to them to suggest that their involvement in his life was of any consequence. He thought of Korra and Asami and suppressed a grimace. Certainly their new relationship had left no room for him. He wondered if they even remembered him.

            “No,” he said finally.

            Toru scribbled on the paper for a while. Then she capped her pen and stood with a bounce. “Let me help you up, and slowly this time. I’ll escort you to the healing center for your next session.”

            “Session of what?” Mako asked as Toru grasped his upper arm. He stood with difficulty and leaned against her.

            “Healing,” she replied, “I already told you this.” She began to walk, easing Mako forward at a slow but comfortable pace until he stumbled clumsily, his left hip connecting hard with a table he’d not seen. “It may be best to close your eyes for now. This must be disorienting for you.”

            Mako nodded and obliged. He followed her only half-willingly, tired and modestly depressed, through several rooms where he could hear happy conversation. How strange his waking had been this time around; how strange that the Guan character he first met was so very different from Toru, who seemed to care about his well being at least superficially.

            At last Toru situated Mako in another chair, this one hard and cold, and he watched her blob of color move to the far corner of the room to retrieve something. She returned with something in her hands, pulled a small square table to his side, and sat down.

            “We’ll begin with your eyes,” she said. “Please close them.”

            Mako obeyed and in moments felt cool, wet relief around his face, seeping into his muscles, clearing away the pressure in his brain. He knew the sensation as healing water but had only ever had it applied to muscles cramps and superficial cuts. This penetrated deeper.

            “Open your eyes.”

            With difficulty Mako opened his eyes against the coldness of the water. He saw the room around him in sharper focus than last time though fine details remained blurred through the thick swirling liquid. He blinked against the tingling sensation until Toru told him to close his eyes again, and he did so with relief. After another few minutes she pulled the water away and dabbed at his face with a towel.

            “You’re a waterbender,” he said quietly.

            “I’m a healer,” Toru replied cheerfully. “My parents were from the north tribe, but I’m from Republic City like you.”  
This felt strange to him. “Why is a waterbender working with the Democratic Whatever of Firebenders?”

            Toru said nothing for a moment and moved to sit behind him. “I’m going to work on your ears,” she said, her voice suddenly slightly frigid. “This will be uncomfortable. Relax as much as you’re able.”

            The water muted what little ambient noise Mako had been able to hear moments prior. He thought absently of how strange all this was. Toru had seemed happy, at least on surface levels, until he had questioned her motives. No one could argue how strange it was for a waterbender to be working for a group of firebenders, especially with the way Guan had presented the situation. He did not know where he was or what was happening around him but a sinking feeling in his stomach told him that no good could come as a result.


	4. Healing Part 1

            In all his wildest dreams Bolin had never imagined how relaxing a pool of icy water could be, even while being prodded, manipulated, and questioned by a woman four times his age. Katara had insisted upon beginning the healing process almost as soon as Oogi touched down in Southern Water Tribe territory, and while Korra, Tenzin, and the others were settling in she had escorted him to her tiny healing hut, encouraged him to dress down as far as he was comfortable, and helped him into the pool.

            “As an earthbender it may be uncomfortable for you to be submerged like this,” she had warned, “but I assure you that this is the best way to begin your spiritual healing.”

            Bolin insisted that he would be fine—pro bending had put him in the drink more times than he cared to count—and any discomfort came not from the water itself but instead from its frigid temperature. Still he settled in and rested his head against the edge of the tub.

            Katara bent the water around him for what felt like hours—in reality minutes—before she began the questions.

            “How are you feeling?” was the first. Katara’s voice sounded far away and as gentle as the water around him.

            What Bolin meant to be a coherent reply came out as a groan of utter bliss.

            “Korra mentioned that you’ve been unable to earthbend,” Katara continued casually. Bolin knew he should have felt indignant that the Avatar had told someone else, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. “I’m going to ask you some questions and I’d like you to answer them as honestly as you can.”

            Another grunt.

            “Please understand that these questions will be difficult, but everything you say to me will be in confidence. Unless you threaten to harm someone I’ll keep anything you tell me secret forever.”

            “That’s nice.”

            Katara smiled as she bent the water. “Are you happy?”

            Bolin nodded without hesitation.

            “Are you always happy?”

            This time the nod came slower, but resolutely.

            “How was your relationship with your brother?”

            Bolin peeked at Katara dubiously, as if her questions were beginning to ruin the calm. “It was fine. We got along well. I loved him.”

            “Close your eyes and relax.” She paused for a while as he complied. “How is your relationship with Asami?”

            “Fine.”

            “Korra?”

            “Fine.” An edge of irritation had crept into Bolin’s voice.

            Katara sighed and stopped bending the water. Bolin looked at her perplexedly. “Do you understand how our bending works?”

            “Well enough to do it,” he replied shortly.

            Katara began bending again, speaking slowly as she waved her arms. “Benders are gifted with special attunements to the elements, attunements which align through our chakras. When our chakras are in sync we are able to bend to our fullest potential, but when they fall out of sync our bending grows weak.”

            “So what?”

            Again, Katara stopped bending and this time she gave Bolin a stern expression. When she spoke, however, her tone remained cordial if not motherly. “Your chakras are misaligned. My questions are designed to test the strength of your spiritual connections, to release anxiety, to _center_ you.” She placed emphasis on the word as if it should have carried significant meaning. “Let me start again, with more transparency. Close your eyes and sit straight.”

            Bolin closed his eyes and sat straight.

            “The base chakra is the foundation of your spirit. It centers around familial connections, and it is blocked by fear” she reached into the water and pressed one palm firmly against the base of his spine. He twitched slightly at her touch. “If these connections are strong, your base chakra is stable and can support a healthy spiritual system. If this chakra is weak…” she let the words drift away, paused, and removed her hands from the water before beginning again. “How was your childhood?”

            “Terrible.”

            “Were your base needs met?”

            “No.”

            “How was your relationship with your parents?”

            “I don’t remember much.”

            Clearly the agitation had not cleared away. Katara reached into the water and pressed her palm flat against his stomach, atop his naval. “The sacral chakra deals with problems of trust, individuality, and pleasure. Do you feel guilty that you don’t remember your parents?” In response, Bolin’s eye opened again and he glared daggers at her. Katara took this as affirmation and moved on without fuss. “Is it easy for you to stand up for yourself?”

            “I’m a decent earthbender.”

            “Let me rephrase the question. How easy is it for you to express your beliefs? Will you tell someone if they are doing something you believe is wrong?”

            Bolin hesitated. “Usually.”

            Katara pressed her hand against Bolin’s chest then and continued with well-restrained frustration. “The solar plexus chakra deals with issues of willpower and self-confidence. Are you confident?”

            Again Bolin hesitated, thinking of all the times he had had to give himself pep talks in times of pressure. He had lost count of the number of instances during which he had questioned his ability to follow through when people needed him, the number of times he had said or done something stupid or silly to redirect attention away from his self-perceived inadequacy.

            “Are you afraid of change?”

            All at once Bolin stood dripping from the pool, all the relaxation gone from him, and he glared down at Katara. “Look, I’m sorry, but I can’t handle this right now. I don’t understand what any of this has to do with Mako, and I don’t understand how making me feel bad about myself is going to get my bending back.”

            Katara stood, unfazed, and produced a towel. “We don’t need to do this again,” she said genially as he dried and dressed. “I’ve found out all I need to know.”

            Bolin rounded on her after pulling on his parka. “What’s that supposed to mean?” He seemed more confused than angry now.

            Katara smiled and ushered him to the door. “There’s no gentle way of describing how badly misaligned your chakras are. It’s a wonder you ever learned to bend, considering your deep-seated problems.”

            Bolin looked hurt.

            “Rest for tonight,” Katara continued comfortingly. “We’ll continue this tomorrow.”

            “I’m sorry,” Bolin said.

            “Not to worry,” she escorted him to the parlor with a smile. “You’re the second recipient of the _not as big of a jerk as you could have been_ award.” When Bolin’s face screwed up in confusion she laughed and added, “Considering all you’ve been through, you could have turned out much worse. May I walk with you?”

            Before he could respond, Katara hooked her hand under his arm and led him into the night. The walk to Korra’s parents’ house was relatively short and the trek passed in comfortable silence. When he opened the door for her she stepped inside to greetings from a dozen happy faces, and Bolin entered behind her.

            “Hey, Bo—oh…” Korra tried to greet him happily, but he walked past her without a word. As he passed, Pabu sprang from her lap to his shoulder with a chitter, and then Bolin entered into the room he had been assigned and closed the door. The Avatar turned to Katara with concern. “Things went well, then?”

            “I had actually hoped to have a word with you,” Katara said after sending round her greetings and patting Ikki and Meelo on the head as she walked past them. “Is there a place we might speak in private?”

            Korra nodded and led Katara to her own bedroom. She pulled the chair away from her desk and motioned for Katara to sit, and Korra took a place opposite her on the bed. They sat in silence for a moment—Katara always seemed slightly distant when Korra was concerned—but then Katara spoke suddenly and with authority.

            “I need a favor,” she said. “I need to borrow your polar bear dog.”

            Korra quirked her eyebrow. “Sure,” she said. “For what?”

            With a sigh, Katara explained, “Things didn’t go well, and I’ve dealt with enough earthbenders in my life to know that the lot of them, no matter how tender-hearted and kind they seem outwardly, are as stubborn as a moose-lion.”

            “That bad, huh?”

            “Your friend is deeply troubled,” Katara said, resigned. “You know as well as I do that spiritual energy flows like a stream through our bodies, keeping us in balance and allowing us to bend. When the debris of life blocks our streams, it often takes only a few items knocked loose to break through. But… To say that Bolin’s stream is blocked would be understatement. It may take a little more force to knock things loose.”

            “So why do you need Naga, then? I mean, I’m happy to give her over, but—“

            Katara smiled benevolently. “Traditional waterbender healing hasn’t been working, nor have the airbender techniques that Aang taught me, not even in conjunction. I think that your friend needs some traditional earthbender meditation to release his blockages, and then we can start fresh.”

            “What does that mean?” Korra asked. “Traditional earthbending meditation?”

            Katara smiled but avoided the question. “Bolin is supposed to be at the healing hut at sundown tomorrow. I’d like you to send Naga with him, wait an hour after he leaves, and then meet us near the hot spring two miles east of town. You mustn’t tell Tenzin where we’ve gone or where you’re going, he’ll worry himself sick. Bring Asami, I don’t want you traveling all that way by yourself.”

            Korra nodded.

            “And bring your father as well. There may be some heavy lifting to do afterward.”

            Again, Korra nodded.

            “Very good, then,” Katara said, and she stood with renewed vigor. “I’ll see you tomorrow evening.”

            The ancient waterbender left Korra in her room alone with her thoughts. It wasn’t long after she left that Asami entered, looking perplexed. She sat on the bed beside Korra and watched her expectantly.

            “What?” Korra said flatly.

            “Well?” Asami replied. “What did she want?”

            Korra shrugged. “To borrow Naga tomorrow night. Something about _traditional earthbender meditation_ she’ll be doing with Bolin at the springs.”

            “He didn’t seem happy when he walked in,” Asami said pensively, and Korra nodded. “I hope she didn’t push him too far.”

            The two left the conversation at that and readied themselves for sleep. They bedded down together, warm beneath the blankets, and dreamed peacefully until morning.

            The next day passed in a hectic blur. Tenzin and his family had left the night prior to stay with Katara, and so Korra, Asami, and Bolin were left alone and slightly awkward with Tonraq and Senna. They breakfasted with cordial conversation, which steered entirely away from Ba Sing Se or Mako, and though Korra and Asami were spirited and well rested, Bolin answered questions only when he was asked directly. He was agreeable enough, however, accepting second helpings that came without request and clearing his plate out of respect.  Though everyone was curious, no one spoke of the healing sessions prior or to come, and Bolin offered no indication that he was willing to indulge any budding curiosity.

            In the afternoon, Korra, Senna, and Asami went to market while Tonraq and Bolin sat round the fire discussing pro bending, brothers, and women. Much to Bolin’s surprise the chieftain seemed more than aware—and oddly accepting—of his daughter’s present conquests, explaining that the Avatar’s spirit had lived many lives and so a wide range of romantic tastes was to be expected.

            Bolin left at sundown as instructed, leading Naga along behind him, and arrived at the healing hut in fair spirits. Katara met him at the door with a wide smile.

            “It’s chilly tonight,” she said in greeting, and Bolin heartily agreed. “Would you mind helping me up? I’m old, you see, and polar bear dogs are not my preferred mode of transport.”

            “Where are we going?”

            “To a place full of spiritual energy,” Katara replied, “where we can focus without interruption.”

            Naga dropped to the ground, Bolin helped Katara aboard, and the waterbending master navigated them away from the village. Naga kept a brisk pace even when Katara led her off the paved roads and into the wilds of the east, and Bolin asked no questions.

            “I think this place will do,” Katara said after a while when they had reached a clear flat blanketed with snow and ice, well beyond view of the city lights. “Naga, down.”

            The polar bear dog obliged and Bolin helped Katara from her perch. Then Katara motioned the dog away, told her firmly to stay put, and led Bolin into the center of the clearing.

            “I figured you’d take me to the spirit portal,” Bolin said absently. “You said we were going someplace with spiritual power.”

            Katara smiled and patted him gently on the shoulders, and as she walked away from him said, “Spiritual power manifests itself differently in all kinds of people and places.” Then she rounded on him. “Are you ready?”

            Genuinely perplexed, Bolin shrugged. “Ready for what?”

            A hard-packed block of ice connected solidly with his shoulder, a projectile he had not seen coming, and as he recovered from his stagger Bolin looked to Katara in utter befuddlement. Another block came hurtling forth and this he dodged easily enough. As he watched her, she smiled.

            “What are you doing?” Bolin asked in disbelief.

            “Opening your chakras,” Katara replied simply and sent a third block toward him. She had said the words playfully, and it seemed that her bending was only halfhearted. The ice that had hit him had not hurt and was more startling than it was damaging. “Fight back, Bolin. I won’t go easy on you just because I’m old.”

            “I can’t fight back!” Bolin cried, dodging another casually tossed shard. “Not only will Tenzin murder me, I can’t bend!”

            Katara planted her feet in an offensive posture and her face turned suddenly grave. “So be it.”

            Bolin’s heart jumped to his throat. He had heard enough tales of this woman to know her prowess—at least in younger days—as a skilled waterbending warrior. Even in her old age she looked imposing enough to cause his stomach to constrict with anxiety. He moved to plead with her, but as soon as he raised his arms Katara’s barrage began.

            Ice shards pelted Bolin ceaselessly, mixed with larger chunks that sent him sprawling. All he could do was raise his arms to block and dodge what he could. “Stop it!” he cried. “This is ridiculous!”

            A stream of icy liquid water smacked him across the face. “Stand up for yourself!” Katara demanded, sending another shard of ice his way. This one caught him mid-dodge, below the left eye, and opened a stinging slice that bled freely. Katara stopped for a moment while Bolin reeled from the blow, his hand pressed against his bleeding cheek with a dumbfounded expression plastered on his face. “This is pathetic,” she said coldly. “It’s no wonder Korra left you.”

            Bolin’s eyes went wide, insulted. “What? She never _left_ me. She was never _with_ me to begin with.”

            Katara waved his argument away, and in the same fluid motion sent another barrage of ice and snow at him. He rolled deftly to the side. “It makes no difference. It’s no wonder why,” she called above the noise. “Southern Water Tribe girls like strong men!”

_Is she mocking me?_ Bolin thought as he blocked a shard with his forearm, anger building in his gut.

            “Fight back!” Katara demanded, her voice intense but neutral. With a great sweep of her arms she raised an enormous boulder of ice and snowpack and hurled it with incredible speed.

            Unable to dodge, Bolin planted his feet firmly. _It’s now or never,_ he thought, _it’s Bolin time. Bolin time. Come on…Bend!_ His brow knit with intense concentration and he focused his energy on the earth beneath the snow, intending to raise a thick protective barrier before him as he had done a thousand times in the past. The movements came naturally: sweep the left foot back, a strong stomp forward with the right, lift the arms to draw the earth from the ground.

            Nothing happened.

            The glacier connected with a sickening crack, splintering against him and sending him sprawling to the ground, dazed, breathless, and angry. He rose at once to find more ice and snow and water flying toward him. He took two hard hits to the shoulders, one to the chest, another face full of water, and each blow left him angrier than the last—not at Katara, but at his own inability to defend against a woman he should easily best, if not out of sheer skill then out of pure stamina, strength, and youth. He was a lavabender—maybe the _only_ lavabender—yet here an eighty-year-old healer was embarrassing him like a child.

            “It’s no wonder you grew up alone!” Katara mocked, all the joy gone from her voice. “How could your parents have survived having to protect a weakling like you?”

            Another chunk of ice crashed into him. He wanted to shout at her how ridiculous such a statement was—he had been six years old when his parents died, completely incapable of earthbending, incapable of protecting them from anyone or anything, let alone a skilled psycho firebender. Though the thoughts raced through his head the words would not form in his mouth. All that came out was what sounded to him as an angry growl, animalistic and full of rage, and again he planted his feet.

            The barrage intensified; bricks flew at him left and right with blinding speed and accuracy, Katara’s insults continued, stinging as much as the physical attacks. “And your brother—if he was half as weak as you it’s not a wonder he died!”

            A lump of ice caught Bolin square in the forehead and he stumbled backward.

            Bolin erupted.

            With a cry of purest rage he fractured the earth. Fissures shot a hundred feet in all directions, opening jagged clefts in the ice, shaking the ground so severely that Katara fell. Bolin didn’t see her go down. He didn’t see anything. Never in his life had he been so utterly blinded by rage, deafened by rage, insulted or slandered.

            Another guttural scream, fists pounded against the ground, and pillars of bright red-orange lava shot into the sky so high that they caught wind and darkened at their peaks. Bolin stood, pale faced and narrow eyed, and with a cry of exertion thrust forward his arms, sending a twelve-foot wave of molten rock surfing across the ground.

            Katara moved with speed she didn’t know she possessed. On her feet at once, terrified, she took one glance to the sky, raised her arms, and clenched her fists so tight her knuckles whitened. In a heartbeat the magma wave died with a brilliant splash and the lava pillars crashed to the ground, raising a cloud of steam so opaque that she couldn’t see her own hands. Still she held on, longer than she would have liked, and only after the immense fog began to clear let Bolin fall limp to the ground.

            Again she looked up, never more thankful in her long life for the predictability of the full moon.


	5. Healing Part 2

            Korra, Asami, and Tonraq watched the fight from afar with a healthy mix of amusement, anxiety, and wonder. The wholly one-sided battle was a show fit for festival days, made even more incredible by its source. Katara moved with the grace of a woman half her age and bent the water and ice with power only a lifetime of bending mastery could produce.

            If anything the lot of them felt sorry for Bolin. Even from so far away they could see the desperation on his face as he absorbed hit after devastating hit. Each time Katara’s ice blocks sent him sprawling Asami would gasp and cover her mouth, only to relax once he regained his feet. For a while he seemed to grow sluggish, exhausted, but then Katara began yelling words they could not understand and Bolin seemed to fill with renewed vigor. His expression shifted, his whole stance grew threatening. And then he exploded.

            Slack jawed, Tonraq, Korra, and Asami watched the ground split and the magma erupt. A crack in the ice opened not ten feet to their right and a tendril of molten earth crept toward them slowly, inhibited by the snow. At once Korra moved to intervene but Tonraq grabbed her roughly by the shoulder and held her steady, his eyes locked unerringly on Katara.

            They saw her bend, but no ice or water or snow came up in her grasp. Then the lava fell to the ground, the great cloud of steam rose, and the arena obscured. Korra looked to her father with horrified eyes but he continued to stare ahead resolutely.

            “Wait,” he said gravely. “Just wait.”

            The steam began to clear away slowly.

            “Let’s go,” Tonraq said suddenly, and with one hand under Korra’s arm and the other under Asami’s he helped them to their feet.

            The trio rushed to Katara’s aid, fearing the worst. When they reached her she was standing, out of breath and exhausted, but unharmed. She didn’t speak to them even as they barraged her with questions; she merely stared ahead and waited for the steam to clear.

            “Tonraq, go get him, we’ll need to get back to town as quickly as possible. I may have injured him, I couldn’t see what I was doing.”

            Korra watched her father go. He moved swiftly, stepping deftly around sluggish lava streams. Once he reached the impassably vast flow encircling Bolin’s body he surfed along a bridge of thick ice that hissed and melted as it met the heat. Then Tonraq knelt, scooped Bolin into his arms frantically, and rushed back wearing an expression of utmost concern.

            “You bloodbent him,” Korra cried as Tonraq went, her voice a mix of confusion and horror. Asami wore the same disgusted expression as Korra.

            Katara breathed deep. “And it’s a good thing I did. He would’ve killed me.” She paused and looked to Korra. “Get Naga.” Then when Korra had gone she looked to Asami. “I’ll fashion us a sled, but we’ll need to connect it to Naga’s saddle. Can you do that?”

            Asami nodded.

            Katara raised a slab of ice from the earth, sculpting it as a litter with shallow sides and small blades. Asami removed Naga’s leash and fastened the sled to the rear of her saddle. When Tonraq arrived he placed Bolin on the sled and all looked to Katara for orders.

            “Tonraq, Korra, you make certain that his ride is as smooth as possible. Asami, dear, would you please help me up, and make certain that the sled doesn’t come undone.”

            The lot did as they were told. As they rushed back toward town Katara continued her instructions urgently. “You must not tell anyone what happened here tonight.”

            “Did you _plan_ to bloodbend him?” Korra interrupted. There could be no coincidence that she’d brought Bolin out under the full moon. “It’s illegal! He’s my friend!”

            “Enough, Korra!” Katara snapped, and the Avatar went silent. “I had hoped against it, but worried that whatever he had pent up might have an explosive ending. I had hoped that whatever was blocking his chakras was sadness or grief or mourning, instead it was rage.”

            “I don’t think I’ve ever seen Bolin angry in my life,” Asami stammered beneath her breath.

            “Apparently not,” Katara replied. “Bottling up that kind emotion is unhealthy.”

            They neared the hut and slowed their pace. When they arrived Tonraq helped Katara from Naga’s back and planted her firmly on the ground.

            “Get him inside,” Katara urged, and she followed Tonraq into the hut. “Korra, Asami, you stay here. I’ll need you in a moment.” Then she and Tonraq disappeared into the private healing chamber. “Get those clothes off of him before he freezes to death,” Korra heard her say through the closed door, then Katara said irritably, “Oh for goodness’ sake, Tonraq, I raised two boys! Just get him in the water!”

            Korra looked at Asami with mounting dread, but Asami merely shrugged.

            “Korra!”

            Korra rushed into the room. Tonraq was standing clear of the pool, scarlet faced with his eyes on the ground. Whatever immodesty had flustered him had been neatly concealed by the pool’s wooden cover, half closed over Bolin’s lower body, and Korra looked between all three people with confusion.

            “Fire. We need heat,” Katara ordered, beckoning Korra close. When Korra hesitated the healer grew agitated. “What is it with you young people and your fear of _bodies_.”

            At this, Korra moved quicker, seating herself beside the pool. Katara had opened a panel on the side of the enclosure, revealing a neat metal box tucked away beneath the basin. At once she began to firebend, pumping as much heat into the box as she could, and within a minute steam rose from the water.

            “Now that’s enough,” Katara barked, “you don’t want to boil the poor boy.”

            Korra stepped away from the basin and into her father’s arms. They watched speechlessly as Katara waved her arms atop the pool, swirling the water gently over the scrapes and bruises and cuts she had wrought on Bolin’s body.

            “You don’t need to stay for this if you’re uncomfortable,” Katara said with a deep breath, more gentle now that things had fallen apparently under control. “I imagine he’ll be asleep for a while, perhaps all night, and when he wakes he’ll be a wreck.”

            Tonraq tightened his grip on Korra’s shoulders, a clear indication that he would prefer to go.

            “I want to stay,” Korra said. “Dad, you can go, I’ll be okay. Will you send Asami in, if it’s all right?”

            Katara nodded her assent and Tonraq left. Asami entered moments later, timidly, wringing her hands and staring at the pool uncertainly. She took a seat against the wall beside Korra, and the two joined hands to watch intently as Katara continued her healing.

            “So what happens next?” Asami asked after a while.

            “I don’t know,” Katara replied. “All I do know is that you’ve got a powerful friend here, and you’d do well to keep him around.”

            The girls nodded as one.

            “He’ll be hurting for a while, you can count on that, but as for when he wakes up?” she shook her head slowly. “I brought up something primal. I don’t know whether he was even aware of what he was doing. That’s why I resorted to bloodbending, Korra.”

            Secretly, Katara hoped that she hadn’t hurt him.

 

*****

 

            Bolin woke but did not open his eyes. He knew at once that he was submerged to his neck in the healing tank, that comfortably warm water was flowing around him, and that his body hurt more than it had hurt at any point in living memory. His head pounded, his muscles felt heavy and weak.

            He was naked.

            He was in the healing waters. Someone—Katara?—was bending that warm water around him. And he was naked.

            “Relax,” Katara said soothingly. “I know you’re awake.”

            A thousand questions rocketed through Bolin’s brain with emotions to match. Confused, he wanted to ask what had happened; afraid, he wanted to ask if he had hurt her; slightly ashamed, he wanted to ask why he was nude. Instead, what came out of his mouth was a lame, “I’m sorry.”

            He didn’t even know what he was apologizing for, but it seemed the appropriate thing to say given the situation. He remembered the fighting up to the point where she had begun to insult him, but he couldn’t remember the insults. He couldn’t remember how it all ended. Somewhere along the line he had blacked out and everything after that fuzzy boundary was lost. He wanted to cry.

            “You’re all right, dear,” Katara said. “Just relax. It’s five o’clock in the morning, you’ve been asleep most of the night.”

_Odd_ , Bolin thought. _It feels like I haven’t slept for days._ “We were in the middle of nowhere…”

            “And now we’re safe back in the healing hut. Tonraq helped me get you here. There’s nothing to be ashamed of. I injured you, and now I’m healing you as thoroughly as I know how. You’d have frozen to death in those wet clothes of yours.”

            Bolin opened his eyes at last and noted with no shortage of relief that his modesty was concealed from the world by a thick wooden panel that covered half the pool. Then he noted with slightly less relief that Korra and Asami were sleeping atop each other on the floor in the corner of the room. Apparently, Katara noted his apprehension.

            “They assisted me in getting you here,” she explained. “Korra’s been helping keep you warm, and she airbent your clothes dry. They didn’t see anything.”

            “I don’t care if they see me naked,” Bolin replied without thinking, and went immediately scarlet. “That’s…not what I meant…”

            Katara smiled a wise old smile. “You seem flustered. Will you tell me what’s going through your mind right now?”

            “Everything hurts,” he said and pressed his hands against his forehead, the heels of his hands resting against his eyes. “What did you do to me?” He remembered being pelted with ice over and over and over. He examined a pinkish-purplish bruise on his triceps.             Then he touched his face where he recalled she had cut him. The gash remained, and his fingers came back with the slightest stain of red.

            “I’ve not had a chance to heal that yet, unfortunately.”

            “Did I bend?”

            Katara laughed a genuine, elated laugh. “Oh, sweet boy, you did, and it was magnificent. I genuinely feared for my life.”

            Bolin’s eyes went wide.

            “I didn’t know you could bend lava. That’s a rare gift. Only a few avatars have been known to possess that ability.”

            Bolin stammered stupidly. “I didn’t hurt anyone…”

            With a serene smile, Katara shook her head. “There’s something you should know, and I’m sorry for it,” she said, and paused to think. “You—I don’t know how to describe what you did, but it was amazing. Berserk, I suppose. Mindless. You weren’t yourself is what I’m trying to say: You’re one of the most mindful people I think I’ve ever met.”

            “What did I do?” Bolin’s voice trembled, terrified.

            “Raw power. It was beautiful, but horrifying. You must’ve made a thousand cracks in the earth, and out of each one you drew the most amazing fountain of lava, fifteen or twenty feet high. You…you sent one of those fountains at me.”

            If possible, Bolin’s eyes went wider.

            “Again, I apologize. I was afraid, having never dealt with lavabending before. I expected some explosive release of emotions from you and thus timed our outing with the full moon. I didn’t expect things to get quite so intense.”

            “You bloodbent me,” Bolin said, at last coming to the realization.

            “Please forgive me, Bolin,” Katara said genuinely. “I had hoped never to use that ability again, but…you had me outmatched and I had to disable you before you hurt someone.”

            “Why can’t I remember it?”

            Again, Katara smiled. “As I said, you were not yourself. I trust you recall our discussion about chakras?”

            Bolin nodded.

            “Yours were backed up something terrible, dammed like a river. I had thought that your grief for the loss of your brother was what ultimately caused the blockage, resulting in your inability to bend, but after a time it became clear to me that your grief was only a small portion of your problem. All sorts of negative emotions blocked your energies, and what came out of you was the purest rage I’ve ever seen.”

            “Oh,” Bolin said lamely.

            “Left for too long, negative emotions build into resentment and anger, and it seems to be your nature to keep those emotions locked away. You might think you’re letting them all go in the moment, but deep down somewhere they build up and are left unresolved. I cut loose the dam,” Katara continued explaining, “and thus released all the things that were blocking you from bending. Each of these items will pass through the stream, and I beg of you to work through them in turn if they cause you more trouble.”

            Absently, Bolin looked to Korra and Asami in the corner, and he worried that they had seen this explosion Katara spoke of. He wondered what they would think of him.

            “What do you feel when you look at them?”

            The question caught Bolin off guard and his stomach gave a sick lurch, but he contemplated nonetheless. _Deal with the issues one by one_ , he reminded himself, _or you’ll be blocked all over again._

            “I feel sad. And angry.”

            “Why?”

            “I don’t know,” Bolin reasoned as he fidgeted in the water. “I shouldn’t be sad to see them together. They love each other, and that’s okay. I’ve got Opal, and that’s okay, too.”

            Katara smiled benevolently. “You’ve dodged the question well enough, now answer it. Why are you sad?”

            The answer had, in truth, always been in the back of Bolin’s mind, but any time it bubbled to the surface he pushed it back down again. The issue was over and done, resolved years ago, and bringing it back up would do no one any good.

            “Bolin?” Katara prodded. “I can tell by the look on your face that you’re trying to rationalize. Just answer the question. This is part of dealing with the problems, you see. Reasoning your way out of something is not the same as facing your feelings.”

            The words caught in his throat when first he tried to speak. But Bolin swallowed hard, took a deep breath, and finally said; “Everyone got a chance with Korra except for me.”

            “And you resent her?”

            He shrugged. “I don’t know. I got one measly date, and Mako killed it before it ever got a chance to get off the ground.”

            “Do you think things would be different now if she had picked you instead of him?”

            “I don’t know,” he said. “We were happy.”

            “Have you addressed this with Korra?”

            Had he not been naked, Bolin would likely have sprung from the pool in outrage. “Of course not! I’ve got Opal! It’s all over and done with, doesn’t make any sense to—“

            “Hum, you need to stop thinking about what makes sense,” Katara said thoughtfully. “You earthbenders are wildly pragmatic, do you know that? Right now you’re clearing away old blockage, addressing problems that are harming your body and mind. I won’t force you to talk to anyone about anything you don’t feel comfortable with, and I’ll never tell a soul what we’ve spoken of here tonight, but I encourage you to explore your emotions instead of rationalizing them.”

            Bolin nodded.

            “And as for those two,” she continued, “just remember that your love is no less valuable to them than the love they share with each other. I don’t believe there’s a person in this world who’s ever lived without wondering what life would be like with another person. Perhaps you were always meant to wonder about Korra.”

            “You married Avatar Aang,” Bolin said. “Did you ever wonder about how your life would be if you ended up with someone else?”

            Again, Katara smiled. “Many times, with many different people. But that’s not to say I wasn’t extremely happy with Aang; I was.” She paused and stopped bending the water. “I think it’s time you got out,” she said resolutely. “There’s a spare bed here in the hut that you can sleep in, with a radio if you’re not feeling restful. I weakened you quite a bit—I can’t force you to sleep, but I want you to relax. And _actually_ relax, don’t worry about what other people think about what happened tonight.” She produced a towel and placed it on the wood panel covering the bath, and then retrieved his dried clothes from the corner. “I’ll excuse myself so that you can dress in modesty. I need some sleep as well. You’ll be in the second door on the left down the entryway.”

            Before Bolin could thank her, Katara left the room. He heaved a great sigh, grabbed the towel from the base of the pool, and quietly exited the basin. He wrapped the towel round his waist, pulled on his undershirt, and with a final rueful glance to Korra and Asami left to the room Katara had specified. Once in private he dried and dressed and flopped onto the bed, turning on the radio when he landed. The reception was poor but he could make out the early morning news broadcast over the fuzz.

            “…in the wake of the Ba Sing Se attack. President Raiko will reopen Republic City’s borders tomorrow morning, though travelers into the city will be subject to strict restrictions and search requirements.  United Republic Armed Forces remain stationed for cleanup in Ba Sing Se, and small regiments have been spread throughout the Earth Kingdom. A fleet of ships remains in Republic City Harbor. These precautions come even though no further messages have been received from the DSF. Again we remind folks to remain vigilant. If you see or hear anything suspicious or out of place, report to your local authorities immediately.”

            Bolin sighed.

            “In other news, the remaining Earth Kingdom elections finished yesterday with seventy-five percent turnout to the polls. Unsurprisingly, votes have been being counted quickly, and we have the following results in real time: In the Si Wong Desert, Na Zhang; in the Kolau Mountainous Region, Jun Wu Sung; in the Zaofu Region, Suyin Beifong; in the Gaoling Region, Xiu Rei Huan. Ballots are still being counted from Omashu and the Northwest Forested Regions. We expect the remaining winners to be announced tomorrow.

            “And now for your weather…”

            “It’s cold in the South Pole…” Bolin muttered dryly, and turned the dial on the radio. At least Suyin had won her election, he thought as he fine-tuned to the next station. He hadn’t even known she was running. And the travel restrictions on Republic City were being lifted, so maybe he would finally be able to see Opal.

            He settled on the clearest signal he could find: a jazzy station that did not fit his mood. Restless, Bolin rolled around on the bed, crushed the flat pillow between his elbow and his head, rolled some more, sat up, stretched, looked out the window, retuned the radio again, and lay back down. Katara’s orders to relax kept rolling through his brain but his body simply would not comply. At last he found a relatively comfortable position flat on his back, arms behind his head, half tucked beneath the heavy blankets. He stared at the ceiling as crackling melodies floated over him, watched the sun begin to rise out of the east-facing window, and groped absently at his middle when his stomach grumbled angrily.

            Half dozed, he heard the door open and sat bolt straight, startled. At some point the radio had gone to dead air and the sun had come up well over the horizon. Korra entered the room carrying a basin of water and she grinned at him widely.

            “Good morning!” she said brightly.

            “Good morning,” Bolin replied, less so.

            Korra sat across from him at the foot of the bed and placed the basin between them. “Katara asked me if I’d finish up some of the minor healing for her. She’s helping Tenzin with the airbender kids. Apparently they’re reopening travel to Republic City tomorrow and Tenzin wants to get back early to avoid any trouble.”

            “Where’s Asami?”

            Korra’s smile widened. “She’s rustling up some breakfast for all of us. Now let me take a look at you.” She grabbed him by the chin, perhaps more roughly than she intended, and scrutinized the cut on his cheek. “That’s not minor,” she said with a pout.

            Still, she drew the water from the basin and bent it round the wound with her brow wrinkled in concentration. Bolin fidgeted, his eyes locked on his fingers. After a bit, Korra dropped the water into the basin and moved on to a bruise on his arm, then a cut on his other arm, all without a single word.

            “I don’t think I’m going to be able to completely close that scratch on your face,” she said dully while tending the fourth superficial bruise. “It’s a lot deeper than it looks. Do you want me to try again?”

            Bolin shrugged.

            “Are you okay?”

            Fidgeting still, Bolin struggled for words with Katara’s recommendation rushing through his brain. He felt like a large swarm of buzzard wasps had suddenly taken residence in his stomach. “The last few weeks have been sort of bad,” he said, and then looked discouraged by his understatement. “I mean, I lost everything. I mean, I still have Pabu, and I’ve got you and Asami, I suppose, and Tenzin, I guess. But…”

            Korra deposited the water in the basin, her full attention on her distressed companion. It was concern that knitted her brow now, not concentration, and Bolin noted the expression with doubled anxiety.

            “Look,” he said bluntly, “I’m just not happy with the way things turned out.” He paused and glanced up at her, then immediately back at his hands. His face felt very hot. “Between us.”

            Korra’s head tilted, and Bolin was struck by her resemblance to a confused Naga. Still, she remained quiet.

            “I’m happy with Opal, don’t get me wrong,” he rambled, “and I’m happy that you and Asami have—well, whatever it is you two have, I’m happy for you. I just don’t think I got the chance I deserved…” his face crinkled in frustration and he sighed deeply. “I just want to know that the right decisions were made.”

            Korra didn’t know what to say. “You’re such a nice guy,” she said at last. “Opal is lucky.”

            Bolin looked at her sheepishly.

            “Maybe things didn’t go well for us, but I’m happy with what we’ve got,” Korra continued gently. “Tenzin told me once, when Mako and I were having issues…” She paused to read Bolin’s reaction to Mako’s name. When nothing came, she continued, “Relationships don’t have to be _romantic_ to be intimate, is what he told me. What you and I have isn’t romantic, not by a long stretch, but I know if I’m ever in trouble I can come to you and you’ll have my back, and you’ll make me feel better. And I hope I’ll be able to do the same for you when you need me.”

            Bolin recalled their night together after Mako’s burial, and a pang of regret stabbed at his stomach. It had been like lying with a sister, or what he imagined that would feel like: Without romantic intention at all. He had just needed comfort, someone familiar and friendly and nonjudgmental to stay with him. Mako had always filled that role for him, though certainly the brothers had never spent the night in such an intimate position as he and Korra had. Was the Avatar the one to fill that role now? The one with whom he should be intimate but not romantic?

            “I’m sorry,” he said. After a long silence he looked up and noticed the slightest hint of wetness at the edges of Korra’s eyes. Surprised, he held up his hands and stammered, “Oh no, I’m so sorry. I upset you. I didn’t mean to upset you!” She hadn’t even cried at the funeral.

            She threw herself on him, upturning the bowl of water and wrapping him in a breathtakingly strong embrace. “You big idiot,” she choked, burying her face in his shoulder. “Stop being sorry about everything! Stop worrying about everyone else! You’ve got to take care of you first!”

            “I’m sorry!”

            With a genuine laugh Korra pulled back, tears still in her eyes. She gripped him round both cheeks and planted a firm kiss in the middle of his forehead.

            “Ow!”

            Surprised, Korra fell back and watched Bolin grope at the cut on his face. “You can’t go five minutes without hurting me, can you, woman?” he cried, and she laughed.

            “I think it’s my turn to apologize,” Korra said, happy again. She righted the overturned bowl and drew the spilt water from the bedclothes, replacing it in the basin. “Are you going to be all right?”

            His grin was lopsided and halfhearted. “I hope so.”

  



	6. Imprisoned

            The room in which Mako had been confined was cramped but comfortable, with a wall-mounted wood framed cot, a desk and chair, a toilet, and a sink. A single shelf had been recessed into the wall above the desk and contained old, dog-eared volumes of firebending propaganda dating to well before the hundred-year war. The room was just wide enough to pull out the chair and sit, and long enough that he could pace for five seconds in each direction before needing to turn around.

            Daily healing sessions for four days had brought his eyesight almost entirely back to normal, and his hearing recovered as well though it remained better on his right side than his left, which still painfully rang several times daily. These sessions were the only time he was permitted to leave the cell and absorb his surroundings. From these trips Mako surmised that the place at large had once been a prison of some kind, refurbished to seem more as a group of dormitories than a lockup. His room sat along a square block several stories high with a wide-open courtyard in the middle where people in varying states of health took part in a wide array of activities from reading to weightlifting to playfully firebending with each other. They all appeared happy enough.

            Toru remained his caretaker and escort, and she seemed well liked among the compound. Now that Mako could see he understood why: She was young, perhaps Bolin’s age, bright-eyed and always smiling, but with a slightly sad look in her eyes all the same. Each day she came to his cell around noon with lunch—usually plain white rice and some vegetable or tofu—dined with him in quiet, then led him to the healing center, a smaller block of larger rooms equipped with comfortable chairs and enormous basins of clear, clean water. Often Mako wondered how many waterbenders were employed here but he never bothered to ask. Ever since he asked why she was here, Toru seemed unwilling to talk much.

            He was pacing when she entered that day, and she wore an expression of dismay. Mako stopped and watched her standing in the doorway, rocking nervously back and forth from her toes to her heels. “What’s wrong?”

            “You’ve been healed as much as you can be,” she said quietly. “I’m afraid our time together is over.”

            Mako was uncertain how to react to the news. He was surprised that she had come to tell him this, considering the impersonality of the place, and at the same time apprehensive about what was to come next. He simply stared.

            “You’ll be transferred out of this compound to your new home tomorrow,” Toru continued. “Since you’re healthy you’re able to be integrated into the Society.”

            “Integrated into the Society…” Mako parroted dumbly. “What does that even mean?”

            “When we first met I told you that your questions would be answered, but circumstances have prevented me from making good on that promise. I’m sorry for that,” Toru stepped past him and sat on the edge of the bed. “Sit.”

            Mako straddled the desk chair and rested his chin on his palm. Toru extended her hand and revealed a small silver key, glanced at Mako, and then looked away. “Take it.”

            “What is it?” Mako asked as he pocketed the key.

            “I said you have until tomorrow until you’re relocated,” she said. “Use this time to find the answers to your questions.”

            “Why can’t you answer my questions?”

            Toru looked at the floor as though ashamed. “I shouldn’t be talking to you at all. You see, Guan is—was—“ she sighed deeply. “He’s my fiancé. He doesn’t want me to spend time with the residents. If I disobey…”

            She had said the words with such sadness that Mako couldn’t help but feel sorry for her, yet the simple explanation answered many questions. “You’re as much a prisoner as I am,” he said.

            “No! No! We’re not prisoners here!”

            Mako raised an eyebrow. The words had come out passionately enough, but Toru’s expression belied her confidence. He drew the key out of his pocket and considered it for a moment before waving it in front of her face. “What is this?”

            “I stole it from the guards’ chambers. It’s a master copy; it’ll get you into many rooms, but not all. The healers are given them, and so are the sentinels.” She looked at him with sudden urgency. “You have to understand, Guan didn’t react well to your interview.”

            “My interview…”

            “The questions I asked you,” Toru clarified. “The first time you were lucid I asked you a series of identifying questions…”

            “Yeah, yeah I remember,” Mako interrupted impatiently. “What do you mean he didn’t react well?”

            Toru cleared her throat and averted her gaze, then spoke slowly. “Our society is…blooming. We’re not yet fully matured, but we’re well on the way. Every firebender is valuable to us right now, especially those capable of lightning generation and combustion. That means you’re valuable, you understand, Guan won’t kill you no matter how much he threatens, but he’s unsure where he wants to send you.”

            Mako tilted his head in confusion. “I don’t understand.”

            “He knows you’re connected with the Avatar, and he doesn’t want that kind of threat against the Society. We can’t handle it. He’s very conflicted about what to do with you.”

            “So what?”

            “Well, according to your interview there’s only one link between you the Avatar outside of this compound, one connection that might drive her to search for you. You see, after you’re integrated you’ll be assigned a job for the greater good of the Society. You’ll be sent out into the world to work for the betterment of firebenders everywhere, and we can’t have outsiders interfering after you’ve been assimilated. The odds of you running into the Avatar are reasonably low. If you run into others, people you’re very close to, they’ll break your bond with the Society. It’s happened before. People have died.”

            Mako grabbed Toru by the shoulders firmly. “What are you trying to say? I don’t understand.”

            Toru shook her head desperately. “I don’t know what they’re planning yet. Guan is holding a meeting with his advisors this evening in the general assembly hall in cell block C to decide what they’ll do with you.”

            “That’s why you gave me the key…”

            “I have to go.”

            “No!” Mako commanded, even as she stood. “I don’t understand this _connection_ thing! What do you mean?”

            Toru turned back at the door and shook her head, and then she left. Dumbfounded, Mako looked between the closed door and the key in his hand, his mind working to decode the strange conversation. She had said so much, yet so little. _Integration, assimilation, connection_. And this meeting? Clearly she had meant for him to eavesdrop, but he hadn’t the slightest notion where cellblock C was, or what actual time the meeting was to take place. For an informant, Toru had been woefully inadequate.

            Mako spent the rest of the day pacing the tiny walkway between the desk and the cot, laying down occasionally, staring at the key, and pacing some more, always thinking. He deduced several things: This was absolutely a healing camp or quarantine, where new firebenders were brought for rehabilitation and filtering; each firebender was given the same interview he had been, given a chance to accept or reject the Society. The leaders would judge them based on the results of their interview, and each person would be dealt with accordingly. There was a hierarchy, of which he presently sat at the bottom, and Guan at the top, and it seemed that the lines between stations were thick and impenetrable, particularly if the leaders’ fiancée was in such a state of inferiority. Not all firebenders were equal, but all firebenders were important. Otherwise, Mako could not guess.

            He lay on the cot until a guard delivered dinner, but he did not have the appetite for another bowl of plain white rice. Once it had gone cold he mustered his nerve and drew the key from his pocket—it was time to go.

            Mako reached his first obstacle before he even left the room. Locked from the outside, he could not open the door nor could he reach the keyhole to unlock it. With a groan of frustration he examined the mechanism—the latch and bolt were old and rusted and attached the door from the inside. Promising, but he had no tools to remove it. So, he grabbed the desk chair and sat before the door, then cracked his knuckles and set to work.

            With two fingers, he generated a small but precise flame that licked at the metal handle. He worked it on all sides, then the bolts, then the handle again, until the apparatus as a whole glowed faintly. Then he stood, pushed the chair away from the door, and gave a great heaving kick against the metal. Once. Twice. On the third kick the bolts gave way just enough that the door creaked slightly on its hinges.

            Mako peeked into the cellblock, grateful that the heating of the knob had taken long enough for the guards to clear. He stepped out gingerly, double and triple checking the corridor, and scouted over the railing into the courtyard. Everything was empty.

            Quietly he crept down the walkway, eyes peeled for a sign of some kind that would tell him where to go. Finding nothing, he headed down the stairs, through the courtyard and toward the healing chambers, the only place he recognized beside his own cell, with hope that something would be there. Mako entered the block of healing cells and produced the silver key. He opened a door to darkness.

            Relieved, he closed the door, conjured flame in his open palm, and peered around. This room was orderly, with a uniform hung on a peg and a clipboard and chart beside it. He stared with some effort at the paper—a form for a man named Lee Fong—but it revealed no interesting information. He left that room and opened another. This room’s form was stamped with a large red X, which Mako supposed did not bode well. Upon further examination he found that this man, Jeong Wei, had no bending subspecialties, was a councilman from Ba Sing Se, and boasted an incredibly large family.

            “They don’t want anyone looking for us…” Mako uttered, and replaced the chart on the wall.

            Resigned, he considered the uniform. No way he could pass for a waterbender, he thought, he looked too much like a firebender; his yellow eyes would give him away immediately to anyone who took half a glance at him. He moved toward the exit, no closer to answers than when he had set forth.

            Again, he poked his head into the hall but this time it was not empty. Three uniformed guards had just recently passed by and were engaged in interesting conversation.

            “New recruits ship out tomorrow morning then?”

            “Yeah, but they haven’t nailed down which ones yet.”

            His interest piqued, Mako followed stealthily down the hall, keeping a safe distance and darting between shadows.

            “Why? Don’t they normally have this thing ironed out by now?”

            “Yeah. Some of these new guys are coming with baggage, and Guan isn’t sure how he wants to handle things. I think they’re just going to off the councilman and ship his body back to Ba Sing Se to be found in the wreckage. There’s another one, young guy just itching to help out the order, they’re going to send him off to some little village in the Earth kingdom to liberate more firebenders.”

            “Suicide mission, wouldn’t it be?”

            “Most definitely, but Guan will spin it so it looks like the earthbenders were the aggressors.”

            Mako paid no attention to where the guards were taking him, but he noted keenly that the corridors were growing more modern the farther they walked. At last the guards led him through a wide doorway which opened into another large refurbished cell block, though this one was far more lavish than the one in which he’d been housed. New fixtures lined the walkways, and each shining door was fitted with a plaque inscribed with a name and rank.

            This must be cellblock C.

            He waited in the doorway, crouched in a shadow, for the three-guard patrol to move away. Then he darted out into the open. He emerged in the lower level courtyard, the same as in his block, and noted a bright yellow light reflecting from the balustrade of the third story ring. He picked his way up the stairs, dodged a second patrol, and rushed up. Indeed, at the top of the way was a large windowed room. Within, seated round a large table, was a group of ten or twelve men ranging from very old to quite young, having a heated conversation.

_I’ve got to get in there,_ Mako thought as he crawled around the room, hiding beneath the windows. He came across a hall leading back, more cells on its right side, the windowed room on its left. Down he went. The door to the windowed room was the first on the left side. Another door just down the way was unmarked, dilapidated, unlit. Again he produced the key, unlocked the door, and pushed it open quietly.

            He had expected to find a guard asleep, but instead found a room filled with mops and brooms, buckets, dustpans, and all manner of supplies. Again he closed the door, thanking his good luck, conjured a light, and looked around.

            To his great surprise, a rusted old air duct apparently linked this room to the next, and he climbed up to it with care. More fire put to the metal, a gentle tug, and the cover dropped to the floor atop a pile of rags without a sound. Mako squeezed inside and shimmied his way forward until he could just barely make out the men seated round the table. They sounded angry.

            “We can’t take him!” a gray bearded and shriveled old man yelled. “He’s a liability to the Society! He’s too close to the Avatar, and if she finds out—“

_They’re talking about me_ , Mako thought immediately, and he strained to listen, tilting his right ear closer to the outlet. He hoped he hadn’t missed too much.

            “I’ll not have him killed,” said another man calmly, whose voice Mako recognized immediately as Guan but whose face he could not see. “He’s too valuable.”

            “He’s _not_ valuable!” Another man shouted. “Lightning benders are a dime a dozen these days, and he’s got no marketable skills besides!”

            Mako winced at the insult.

            Guan laughed, and it was a bright, happy sound. “You idiot. He’s probably the _most_ marketable of all the new recruits, considering we’ve got no more combustion benders to send out. Shin did some research into him, you see, after Toru did his interview and found out about the pro bending bit. Yes, he’s got baggage and a weak connection to Avatar Korra, but he’s got a history with the Triads, he’s got knowledge of Republic City’s police force, he’s got _street smarts_ that we don’t get to see with your traditional merchant or councilman.”

            “Never mind the councilman!” the first man shouted, pounding his fist on the table. “We’ve already decided on him.”

            “You can kill your councilman,” Guan cooed, “but I get the boy in return. We don’t have anyone else who can navigate Republic City like he’ll be able to.”

            “And what do we do when people come looking for him?” said the second man.

            A third, unfamiliar voice piped up rather timidly. This one Mako could see as a younger man, bespectacled and thin, without much confidence in his posture. “Republic City thinks he’s dead,” he said, adjusting his glasses. “It was in the papers last week, they gave him an honorable funeral service with police escorts and everything.”

            “Lovely!” Guan cried happily.

            Mako covered his mouth to suppress a gasp as familiar panic filled his gut. He _was_ dead? They had buried him? It was published in the city paper? His stomach tightened and he felt sick. Bolin was mourning him: Bolin thought he was dead. He had to get out word. He had to let someone know that he was okay.

            “They’re bound to discover that they buried the wrong man,” said the graybeard. “If we send this Mako kid out into the streets to do our work for us, _especially_ if he goes to negotiate with the Triad in Republic City, someone is going to spot him and recognize him. The _Triad_ will recognize him, won’t they? Someone will find out eventually.”

            Guan waved his hand dismissively. “The only people that will recognize him are this brother and Beifong, and the Avatar if she’s around. If we do things correctly our men will be in Republic City while Korra is busy negotiating with our representatives in the Fire Nation, hundreds of miles away, after we kill Izumi. Beifong will never see him if he stays underground, and the Triads are under new leadership since the snafu with the Equalists. It’s been years since any of those roughs have seen him. Besides, they _buried him_. They saw his body all burned and charred and they put it in a box in the ground. Nobody is going to believe themselves if they see a guy who bears a resemblance to him wandering around. They’ll think their eyes are playing tricks.”

            “What about the brother? Certainly he would have recognized the body as a fake.”

            At this, the bespectacled man spoke out. “There was no indication that such was the case,” he said.

            “We need to plan for every contingency if we’re going to keep this kid alive,” said the graybeard forcefully. “You said so yourself.”

            “Toru made a note that the brother would be working on construction in Republic City. We have a group of combustion benders there now, don’t we? Waiting for orders?” There was a pause, as if he was waiting on some response. Then, Guan continued, “If you’re worried about it, send word out to kill the brother, then we won’t have anyone worried about finding our guy. In that line of work it should be easy enough for some kind of accident to happen, and combustion would be the easiest way to make that so. It’ll give my cousins something to do while they wait for the big jobs.”

            Mako’s blood ran cold. His first instinct was to rush into the room, fire blazing away, but he halted himself. That would only get him killed. No, he had to use his brain, and quickly.

            Silently, Mako shuffled backward and dropped from the vent, touching down softly on the pile of rags. He had to find a radio, a telephone, anything to get word back to Republic City. Guan’s men were already there. They would have orders soon. In rising panic he crouched round the windowed room and bolted down the stairs back toward the healing center. Certainly there would be some manner of communication somewhere there.

            Into a room he went, flicking on the lights without hesitation. He searched frantically but to no avail. Back into the hallway. Another room. Nothing. Another. Nothing. Back into the hall. Frozen with anxiety, he looked all around. The whole block looked the same. There was no indication that this compound had any contact with the outside at all, and the hallways were fully abandoned now. There were no guards to follow to his answers.

            His heart in his throat, Mako returned to his room, latched the door as best he could, and threw the key down the toilet. Then, tears in his eyes, he collapsed onto the bed.

            He was a helpless prisoner. He was stuck.

            And Bolin was in trouble.

  



	7. Boot Camp

            They came for Mako early in the morning, and after a sleepless night spent panicking over what he’d heard he put up no resistance. Two guards dressed in maroon uniforms grasped him by the arms and ushered him out of his cell, through the courtyard, and out into the open. If anyone had noticed the disrepair of his door, they said nothing.

            The outside of the building was all red metal, rusted and flaky. The building exited to a leveled concrete platform, gated in by a massive rock wall dozens of feet high. This place was old, Mako thought, and ancient, yet somehow familiar.

            He joined with a group of others, men and women of which half looked terrified and the others excited, and watched as a gondola came sliding down across the sky. Occasionally he lost the car in great puffs of humid sulfuric steam that rose from below, and as it settled on a platform opposite him, realization hit Mako like a brick.

 _The Boiling Rock,_ he thought, his eyes wide. _This is…was…The Boiling Rock_.

            He had read about the old Fire Nation prison in one of Jinora’s books years ago, back when he and the others were running about the world in Asami’s airship to discover new airbenders after Harmonic Convergence. It was the same book in which he’d read about Lake Laogai. Citizens of all nations were held here after being convicted of crimes against the Fire Nation, and were subjected to horrible living conditions and rooms called _coolers_ that lowered body temperature to the point at which firebenders could no longer bend. But according to the text, the prison had been shut down years ago, had been defunded and left to rot in the wake of the war. Firelord Izumi had seen to it that such a barbaric place was eradicated…

            A guard shoved Mako hard from behind toward the gondola and he boarded quietly with the other passengers. With a groan the car moved back along the cable toward a platform high atop the rock walls surrounding the enormous boiling lake, and Mako’s mind began to work. He was in Fire Nation territory, many many miles from Ba Sing Se, but not _too_ far from Republic City. With the number of guards around him and the others there was no hope to make a run for it, much less with the lake of scalding water bubbling beneath him, but perhaps he could send out a message the old fashioned way.

            A quick glance around the interior of the gondola and Mako spotted opportunity. A small spiral bound book sat atop a control panel near the front of the car, a pencil stuck in its binding. He reasoned that it must be a logbook. If only he could get his hands on it, he would have _something_ to work with. He recalled reading about the old Fire Nation Army using carrier hawks to deliver messages—perhaps the birds would remember.

            Feigning interest in the view, Mako shuffled toward the front of the car and waited near the console. Then, all at once, the gondola shifted to a stop and the guards began to wrangle the prisoners through its rusted door. Wordlessly, Mako slipped his hand toward the logbook and pocketed it, unexpectedly thankful for his years on Republic City’s streets.   Then he moved through the door with the others, a flood of adrenaline pulsing through him, and concentrated solely on keeping his breathing steady, surreptitious. Now he had only to make it away from here without anyone noticing the logbook had gone missing.

            His plans lately contained far too many _ifs_ for his liking.

            The herd of prisoners was prodded toward an enormous boat waiting on the shore. They filed into its unremarkable hull, where each man and woman was chained and seated on a long metal stool. A guard placed Mako uncomfortably somewhere in the middle of the group, and Mako felt keenly claustrophobic, not due to the tight spaces nor the bodies pressed against his, but instead because he realized for the first time that every person here seemed exactly like him. They all wore the same ragged burgundy uniform that he wore; they all looked shabby and tired, just barely able to keep their feet. If anything, he felt he might be in better shape than most of those around him.

            As the boat moved away from shore Mako noticed a boy across the aisle who was smiling dumbly at him. Brow raised, Mako spoke skeptically, “What’re you so happy about?”

            “You look familiar!” said the boy cheerily. He couldn’t have been more than fifteen or so, but looked every bit a stereotypical firebender. No sooner had the boy spoken than he looked suddenly crestfallen. “But I don’t remember from where.”

            Perplexed, Mako adjusted in his seat. The logbook was pressing uncomfortably into his rump. “Where are you from?”

            “Oh,” said the boy, “I’m from a tiny village near Crescent Island. It’s its own island, though. We don’t talk to the outside much.”

            “Informative.”

            “What’s your name?” said the boy, again cheery and bright-eyed.

            “Mako.”

            “Cool. My name is Yaozhu. Where are you from?”

            “Republic City.” Mako was tired of the cordiality, and his voice reflected his mood. If he could have, he would have crossed his arms, but they were bolted too tightly to the bench.

            “Do you know where we’re going?”

            “No.”

            “Will you be my friend?”

            Mako looked up suddenly, struck dumb by the sudden unexpected request. “What?”

            Again, the boy looked disappointed. “Well, um…” he stammered. “My family was all sent ahead without me because I wasn’t of age yet. I just turned sixteen a week ago.”

            “Oh,” Mako replied, still deadpan and slightly unnerved by how little the _poor orphaned boy_ excuse affected him anymore. Five years ago he would’ve instantly granted the kid a _yes_ to friendship just by virtue of shared experience. Yet it sounded like Yaozhu’s family was still alive somewhere, and Mako didn’t care.

            “We’re combustion benders, you see,” Yaozhu continued, brightly again and apparently unaware of Mako’s wandering thoughts, “so we’re in high demand for His Excellency, Guan! Now that I’m of age I can go to work!”

            Mako scrutinized the boy even more thoroughly now. He had met only one combustion bender in his life, P’li, who had been a member of the Red Lotus and tried to kill Korra four years ago. The boy bore no outward indication of his combustion bending as P’li had, there was no third eye tattooed on his forehead, no menacing expression, no apparent insanity or psychosis.

            “Why don’t you have a tattoo?” Mako asked, genuinely interested now. “I thought all combustion benders had tattoos on their foreheads.”

            Yaozhu smiled. “No, not yet. We’re not allowed to get tattoos until we’ve mastered combustion bending. I, ah… I’m not very good at it yet.”

            A budding combustion bender. Mako could have laughed if the notion wasn’t so absurd.

            “So, will you be my friend, Mako?”

            “Yeah, whatever,” Mako replied. Apparently satisfied, Yaozhu fell quiet, still grinning.

            Mako’s stomach had been rumbling for an hour when the ship gave a sudden lurch, and the bobbing of the waves seemed to stop. Water slapped against the hull of the boat. He looked around, as did the other prisoners, and noted guards descending the stairs in numbers. There was one guard for each three prisoners by Mako’s count, and they disconnected the chains from the benches and herded the prisoners above deck and onto dry land. They had docked on another island, it seemed, well developed but as disused and dilapidated as the Boiling Rock had been. He could see an enormous statue silhouetted against the noontime sun that had been apparently defaced yet still rose above the tops of the buildings. It belched fire.

            A man descended the beach and stood before the gathering of prisoners, looking distinguished in a maroon uniform decorated with shining metal accents. His high red boots were as glistening as the metal, and he wore on his head a beret-like cap tilted ever slightly to the right. A metal crest on his right shoulder bore the Fire Nation Insignia from the Hundred Year War. The man was important, if nothing else, at huge contrast with his surroundings, and commanded immediate attention. 

            “Welcome to Fire Fountain City,” the man projected, “your home for the next weeks. Here you will be conditioned and assimilated into the Democratic Society of Firebenders, and upon completion of your training you will be assigned duties within our ranks. Consider yourselves lucky, not many make it this far, even among those touched by fire. You are rare and prized possessions of His Excellency Guan, Lord Protector of Firebenders everywhere, and you will do him good service.” The man paused and looked between the faces of his audience, and when next he spoke his voice was menacing. “Be aware that failure to abide by the rules of this compound will result in punishment of an extreme nature. We do not wish to harm any firebender, but ultimately your well-being is your own responsibility. Consider this your only warning.” He turned to the guards and nodded, then said, “Take them to their quarters. The first squad is expected in the yard in fifteen minutes.”

            Mako and the others marched single file toward the ruined city. He kept particular care to maintain the line after watching a woman stumble against her chains and fall outside of the rank, only to receive a swift punch in the back of the head. Mako grimaced for the woman. That had to have hurt.

            The lane down which they walked eventually opened into a wide square over which the crumbling statue loomed. Mako looked up at it when the file stopped. The thing was supposed to be a human, though the left arm, shoulder, and head had been knocked off, and a great gout of fire sprang from the remnants of its neck like a flaming red fountain. Mako supposed that this was where the island had gotten its name.

            At once the prisoners were separated into roughly equal groups, apparently by age. For better or worse, Yaozhu stood next to him at the end of the sorting along with seven other young men, and they watched as groups of elder benders were shoved off to their housing. When the yard had cleared another important looking man came before them.

            “My name is Bingwei,” the man said. His voice was clearer than the one on the beach, and his uniform had fewer metal adornments. He was distinctly younger, though still Mako’s senior by a notable stretch. “I am your Captain, and you will address me as such. As the youngest members of the Society, you will be trained in fighting and insertion, and conditioned as warriors to maintain our freedom.”

            Mako’s eyes wandered. He was already sick of the propaganda. A hawk flew overhead. A fist connected with the side of his face, and next he knew he was sprawled on the ground, his chained wrists at an awkward angle beneath him.

            “I see you’re going to be a problem, daydreamer,” said Bingwei, roughing Mako back to his feet. He held Mako by the collar and glared into his face.

            Mako glared back.

            “You’ll be fun to break.”

            Even though a knot was building in his throat, Mako forced himself to stare resolutely at the man. _I’m not playing along,_ he thought. _Don’t—_

            Again, he was on the ground, his ears ringing painfully. This time it took him a long moment to struggle to his feet, so dazed was he, and when he finally stood Bingwei was addressing the rest, who were staring at Mako with terror.

            “You will be taken to your quarters later. For now, we will lunch, and then you will begin training,” Bingwei looked to the remaining few guards and nodded. “Unchain them.”

            Mako rubbed his wrists when the fetters had been removed, then rubbed his aching jaw and followed his rank into a building just off the plaza. It smelled like heaven—roasted meat of some kind, vegetables, sauces, and some spice that burned his nostrils when he inhaled—it was like being at home. His mouth watered.

            The nine young men were seated at a table and presented with a single, tiny bowl of jasmine rice each.

            “You have one minute!” Bingwei barked, and a bell rang overhead.

            Around him, the others began to eat. Mako wondered how they could be breathing through the sheer amounts of rice they were stuffing in their mouths.

            “Thirty seconds!”

            Mako picked up the bowl and shoveled the rice into his mouth in suit. It was mushy, overcooked, and disgusting, but he barely tasted it as it slid down his throat. He wondered if this was how Bolin felt when he ate—if one could call what Bolin did _eating_.

            Another bell rang and Bingwei shouted, “On your feet, men!”

            The lot of them got to their feet.

            “March!”

            In a single file line, the group walked—shuffled—back out into the yard beneath the shadow of the statue. Bingwei screamed at them to form a line and they did, and when Bingwei shouted at them that their line was crooked they adjusted. Being at the center, Mako stood stone still, modestly afraid but too stubborn to show it.

            “Your names!” Bingwei screamed, and he stood before Yaozhu, at the left end of the rank.

            “Yaozhu Peng!” Yaozhu replied, imitating Bingwei’s important tone.

            Bingwei waited a beat, and struck Yaozhu to the ground. “You will refer to me as your _Captain_ , boy!”

            Yaozhu got slowly to his feet and stood straight, shoulders back, and said commandingly, “Yes, Captain! My name is Yaozhu Peng, Captain!”

 _This is disgusting,_ Mako thought as Bingwei went down the line; _He’s just a kid_. Each man introduced himself with the same gusto as Yaozhu had, addressing the captain by his title, giving his full name, standing at perfect attention. _I’m not a member of the United Forces. I don’t have to deal with this. The Fire Nation can’t conscript me; I’m not a citizen_.

            Then Bingwei stood before him expectantly. “Your name!”

            “Mako,” replied Mako casually.

            This time Mako anticipated the punch, and he blocked it deftly then jumped back out of rank. Bingwei, however, was not a man to be flustered.

            “A man who denies his own punishment is the truest coward of them all,” Bingwei said icily. And then he walked back to Yaozhu and struck the boy again, kicked him while he was down. Then he returned to Mako, who still stood in defensive posture, and looked smug. “Each time you defy me I’ll hurt your fellows, then. Each time you defy me, the group will suffer. Is that what you want, _Mako_?”

            Yaozhu rolled onto his side with a sickly groan, groping at his stomach. Mako felt sick. The kid had done nothing wrong. If anything, Yaozhu had done everything _right_ by measure of this crazed Captain.

            Bingwei grabbed Mako’s collar and pulled him back into rank. His nose an inch away, he barked, “Your name!”

            “Mako, Captain,” Mako replied timidly.

            “Your surname!”

            Mako floundered. Each of the others in his rank had had a last name, but he didn’t. “I…Don’t have a house name, sir.”

            Bingwei laughed haughtily, tossing Mako away and spraying him with just enough spittle to be disgusting. “I see how it is! Not only are you a half-wit coward, you’re a half-wit, low-class _peasant_ of a coward.” Then he moved down the line.

            Minutes later, the group had finished their introductions, and Bingwei stood before them with his arms folded behind his back, surveying them. As a group they seemed strong, though the man to Mako’s immediate right, named Chen, was slightly flabby, and the one to the right of Chen, named Jing, was outright fat.

            “Hot squats! Now!” Barked Bingwei. “And count them!”

 _I’ve never done a hot squat in my life,_ Mako groaned inwardly, though he bent and straightened his knees in rhythm with the rest.

            “One hot squat, two hot squat, three hot squat, four hot squat!”

            Yaozhu, despite his earlier mishap, was yelling loudest of the lot. Mako grumbled the words along with him, if only to keep the combustion bending boy—his friend—from any further harm.

            By hot squat seventy, Mako began feeling nauseous. He’d eaten too much too fast. He was out of shape from his injuries after the explosion. Toru had assured him that he was ready to move on, but suddenly doubt was creeping into his mind. At ninety hot squats he felt faint. At one hundred hot squats, Bingwei commanded them to stop.

            Chen stood with his hands on his knees, panting, his long black hair matted to his forehead, yellow eyes squinted closed.

            “Stand straight, Chen Fu-Han!” Bingwei shouted at him, pulling Chen upright. “If you slouch again I’ll make you do a hundred more!”

            Chen promptly vomited down the front of his shirt, but stood resolutely with his eyes forward, his skin a sick green. Mako felt the food bubbling in his own stomach, his own nausea made worse by the smell of bile and overcooked, half-digested jasmine rice. He felt sweat pooling in the small of his back. It was suddenly very hot.

            “Now run!” Bingwei snapped, and pointed into the heart of the city. The man at the end of the line opposite Yaozhu, named Fa, stumbled into a weak, halfhearted jog. Bingwei screamed, “Run!” again, and Fa picked up pace. To his credit, Bingwei ran right along with them.

            Five circuits past the statue, fifty fire fists, seventy-five jumping jacks, fifty pushups, another circuit past the statue, and the whole of the group was delirious. Chen had vomited again on the fortieth jumping jack, prompting the extra twenty-five, and the rank was granted a brief break when Yaozhu collapsed on the thirtieth pushup. Mako didn’t remember anything after that. All he knew was that somehow by evening he had wound up in a long, multi-storied dormitory with eight metal cots, hard as a stone, each with a single stiff pillow and the thinnest blanket he’d ever felt, surrounded by the smell of sweat and vomit and the slightest hint of jasmine. Still, it was better than sleeping on a trash heap.

            He fainted onto the cot in his sweat soaked clothes, the gondola logbook forgotten in his back pocket.

 


	8. Conditioning

            Mako woke in the middle of the night drenched in cold sweat and barely made it to the window before he retched. What little remained of his lunch landed with a splat in a neat pile on the ground three stories below, and when he’d finished Mako hung half limp, his chest against the windowsill, his arms and head dangling outside in the cold night. His body had never ached so much in his life.

            He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and looked out. The crumbling statue still breathed fire into the cloudless night, and Mako noted with passing interest that the sky was clear and starless, the moon full and bright, and far over the rooftops the sea rippled against a gentle breeze.

            Had the situation not been so dire, had he not been in so much pain, Mako might have found the evening pleasant.

            The nausea subsided and Mako pulled himself back inside with difficulty. His bunkmates slept loudly, half on their cots and half in some strange contortion with arms and legs hanging over the sides. Jing’s whole top half was on the floor, his face pressed against the stone like a very fat pancake, crushed by the weight of his very fat body.

            Mako leaned back against the windowsill and gave a start—the logbook was still in his pocket. He had completely forgotten it in the mayhem of yesterday. He produced it with a cringe of disgust: the palm-sized book had obviously been soaked through with sweat, though presently only the cover remained slightly damp. Mako opened it, unstuck several pages from each other, and perused its contents absently. Each page was a separate form listing a guard’s name, the date, shift start time, shift end time, and any deployments of the gondola. The numbers were neat and, to judge by the various styles of handwriting, kept by each guard individually. It was three-quarters full.

            A bit of quick math based on the last log completed revealed that it had been nine days since the explosion in Ba Sing Se, and twenty days since he’d left Republic City to help Wu oversee the elections. Mako’s heart fluttered. He thought more time had passed.

            Returning to his cot, Mako opened to a clean page and yanked the pencil from the spiral binding. What could he possibly write to Republic City? There was so much to tell, but the pages were so small and there was no guarantee that the note would ever find its way back to anyone of consequence. Even though he’d spotted a hawk earlier he couldn’t be certain that he’d be able to catch one long enough to attach the note. Even if he attached the note there was no way to know that the hawk would reach anyone. What if guards intercepted it?

            After a long period of thought, Mako settled and wrote: _I’m alive. Boiling Rock quarantine, moved to Fire Fountain City. Military camp. Protect Firelord. Protect lavabender. Send help._ He regarded the words pensively, wondering how much more information they would need, or how much he could provide without the letter pointing directly at him. He wanted to write something to Bolin directly. He wanted to write something to Korra and Asami. But the paper was too small, and if the guards around the island saw it…

            Mako tore the page from the notebook and folded it twice. Then, in his tiniest handwriting he scrawled _Republic City Police_ , and he rolled the note up and stuck it beneath his pillow. Resolved that his letter would make it, he took the logbook and pencil to the window, tossed it out, and incinerated them with a great _fwooosh_ that lit the plaza for a few seconds with orange-red fire. Having that thing on him for so long had been foolish and incriminating. He didn’t care to think what would have happened had someone discovered he’d stolen it.

            With another great sigh, Mako returned to his cot and laid back, arms folded behind his head, and stared at the ceiling. He fell into a dreamless sleep with thoughts of home running through his mind.

            A few short hours later the blaring of a brassy horn jolted Mako from that sleep. Bleary eyed he noted his companions in a similar state of surprise. Bingwei stood in the doorway, a long metal instrument in his hand, and he blew into it a second time.

            At the foot of each bed he had placed a pile of clothes.

            “Dress! You have one minute!”

            The lot of them practically flew from their beds and threw off their ragged, sweaty prisoner’s garb. Mako felt nauseous again when he looked at Chen and Jing as they jiggled into their new uniforms, and only tentatively undressed. The new uniform was difficult to negotiate, high collared with asymmetrical golden buttons running up his right breast, stiff cuffs, and the same long boots all the generals wore. These were made of some kind of thick leather, and rather than traditional laces were held on by three wide straps that wrapped round the shin and buckled into place.

            “Form rank!”

            Yaozhu was first in line, and Mako stepped up behind him. The remaining seven had been caught in varying states of disarray: Fa was missing a boot and was presently hopping, trying to force it on; Chen had skipped three buttons on his shirt; Jing looked like a ten pound sausage stuffed in a nine pound casing. Bingwei reprimanded each of them in turn, screaming like a madman, until at last the nine stood in a single file line awaiting orders.

            “Why aren’t your beds made?” Bingwei asked slyly.

            Against his better judgment, Mako said, “Because you didn’t tell us to make them.”

            When he went down this time, his shoulder smashed against Yaozhu’s cot.

            “Make your beds! This place is disgusting!”

            Each man scrambled to his bed, folded the thin blanket, adjusted the pillow, and returned to his place in line. Predictably, Yaozhu was first done and Bingwei regarded the boy with what might have been admiration. Mako was second, and fully expected another backhand. Instead, Bingwei screamed at the other seven, who were just now beginning to stumble back into line.

            “I’m so tired,” Mako heard Fa whisper. “I can’t do this.”

            That day went much like the one prior. A fist-sized bowl of rice for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, with plenty of running, squatting, and lifting between. The uniforms trapped heat and Chen fainted between breakfast and lunch. Mako tugged at his collar when he could find a moment that Bingwei wasn’t watching. Just as intense as the day before, the training ended at sundown, and the rank filed into a large tiled room where Bingwei ordered them to undress, fold their uniforms, and place them in individual bins.

            “Showers! Two minutes!”

            They were the shortest, happiest two minutes of Mako’s life. He didn’t care that eight other men, disregarding the Captain, were naked in the same room. He didn’t care that the temperature was tepid at best. All he cared about was the water rushing over his face, drawing the sweat from his aching body and relaxing his overworked muscles until he wanted to collapse. Beyond the point of exhaustion, he barely noticed when the water stopped, and still felt blissful when Bingwei tossed him his nightclothes, which Mako pulled on without drying.

            “You will have two sets of uniforms. You are in charge of washing them daily. You will have one set of sleepwear. You will have one shower each three days for two minutes. Collect your things.”

            Upon arrival to the bunkhouse, Mako again collapsed onto his bunk in a dead sleep.

            The third day went much like the second. The fourth day went much like the third. By the fifth day Mako’s brain was too fatigued to consider how remarkable a feat it was that he was even standing, let alone being snarky with the Captain. He no longer felt it when Bingwei punished him, though when others were punished in his stead Mako felt keen regret. His muscles ached past the point of pain and his head swam. All he knew was that it had been a full twenty-four hours since the last time he’d been hit personally, and in that day his life had been much easier. All he had to do was follow orders, and then he’d be able to sleep again. Perhaps for only a few hours, but he would be able to lie down.

            The sixth day began differently than the rest. Bingwei woke them with the horn—Mako discovered on the second day that this was a modified Tsungi—ordered them to dress and make their bunks, and filed them in rank. Today he escorted them not into the yard for one hundred and twenty hot squats, nor into the mess hall for rice, but into a brick building set deep in the island.

            A stern looking woman stepped before them, dressed in the same uniform as Bingwei, and addressed them coldly. “Today will rest your bodies and test your minds. We will see where your loyalties lie.”

            Then each man was led into a separate room. Mako could not speak for the others, but his was cramped, with just enough room for two straight-back chairs and area to sit. Dimly lit, he could see little except the black metal chairs and a vent situated in the center of the ceiling, through which comfortable air flowed. Mako sat, and a middle-aged woman took her place in front of him. Clearly a firebender, she turned her yellow eyes on him appraisingly, and then produced from beneath her chair a clipboard and a black pen. She would occasionally, infuriatingly, chew the end of this pen as she talked.

            “Your file suggests that you’ve been giving your commanding officer some trouble,” said the woman at last, without inflection.

            “I don’t have a commanding officer.”

            The woman put a tick mark on the paper. “You served as bodyguard to Earth King Wu, before you were liberated?”

            Mako grunted. It was as much affirmation as he was willing to give.

            “What sorts of things did he do that you appreciated?”

            This question caught Mako off guard. “What do you mean?”

            “You were forced to serve him. What did he do to make that service palatable?”

            “Uh…” Mako stammered. “I wasn’t forced to serve him.”

            “It says in your file that you were assigned as his bodyguard by…”

            “Okay so I was assigned, but I could’ve left if I had wanted. It was just a job.”

            Another tick on the paper.

            “Did you receive any perks from this assignment?”

            “I got new uniforms a couple of times,” Mako said dumbly, thinking. “Free housing in a presidential suite for a few months…”

            “We also have provided you with uniforms. Several of them. And we’ve provided you with excellent quality lodgings.”

            Mako’s face screwed up in confusion. “Are you trying to compare yourselves to Wu?”

            “What are your feelings toward waterbenders?”

            “They’re okay…”

            “Airbenders?”

            “Um…They’re nice people?”

            “Earthbenders?”

            “My brother is an earthbender…”

            “How do you feel about firebenders?”

            At this, Mako’s mind froze. True, he was a firebender in a compound full of firebenders, but somewhere in his mind he’d always harbored resentment toward them for killing his parents. He thought for a full minute, and the woman stared at him the whole while, chewing her pen, until he said calculatedly, “I wish they weren’t always the bad guys.”

            The woman jotted some more notes down on the paper, and then stood. “All is well, then. Excuse me, someone else will be with you momentarily.” She left, taking her chair with her as she did. She closed the door behind her, locked it, and what few lights there were went black.

            Before Mako had the chance to cry in protest, a grainy picture illuminated the wall opposite the door. It was a generic firebender in the same standard uniform he wore, standing proudly with his chest puffed out and two Fire Nation girls hanging from his arms.

            “What the…”

            The picture lingered for a moment before flipping to another image, a pleasant one again, with a group of people happily sharing a meal. Mako scrutinized the picture. These people were too happy—there was no way this place could accurately reflect what was in that photo. Is that what they were trying to do?  
Suddenly the room flashed bright white and Mako winced against it. When he opened his eyes at last there was a new image, an angry man dressed in air acolyte attire, lunging out of the frame. A blast of cold air hit him in the face. Another blinding flash. The ground rumbled beneath him and a man dressed as a Dai Li agent burst onto the screen.

            The first few images weren’t so bad. The flashes startled him at first, but he was able to scrutinize the photos once his sight returned. Each of them, male and female, airbenders, earthbenders, and waterbenders, were all obviously Fire Nation. All of them were black haired, light skinned, with bright yellow-orange eyes.

_This is conditioning,_ Mako thought suddenly, as another picture of an attractive and scantly clothed firebender girl flashed onto the screen, and warm air flowed over him. _This is a conditioning chamber._

            No sooner had he made the realization than the chamber went into sensory overload. With each picture came a new and uncomfortable sensation. Cold air blown in his face, icy water dumped over his head, hard blocks of earth—or was it earth?—connecting with his face and arms and stomach. The worst part was that he could predict nothing. Each picture flashed and seemingly at random the sensory feedback came. Faster and faster the cycles went, in random order, until Mako spluttered and coughed and gagged against the elements, his eyes squinted closed against the flashing. Then the chamber went dark and quiet, and slowly the firebender man from the first photo reappeared on the wall. Warm air flowed down over Mako, drying him, calming him, and a soothing voice floated on high.

            “You are a firebender. Firebenders are friendly,” the voice said sweetly. “Firebenders will not hurt you.”

            Then the onslaught began again without warning and at full intensity. Mako closed his eyes, curled against the chair. Between the air and the water, he was freezing. A blast of earth knocked him off balance to the ground. Breathless he struggled to his feet, a great wave of water blasted him from the right, and he slammed into the wall.

            “Stop!” he cried, but if anyone heard him they did nothing. “Stop!”

            Mako could not have said how long the event lasted, but by the time the firebender man reappeared on the wall he was pounding against the door in panic.

            “You are a firebender. Firebenders are friendly,” the voice called again. “Firebenders will not hurt you.”

            By the end of the next round of terror Mako had ceased pounding, ceased screaming, and sat hugging his knees in the corner, his eyes pressed firmly into his kneecaps.

            And suddenly the door opened, and Mako stood upright, his eyes stinging with tears. It took him a moment to register what stood before him—a waterbender, an air acolyte, and a traditionally garbed earthbender. With a cry of terror he jumped backward, stumbled head over heels over the chair still bolted to the floor, and smacked the back of his head on the concrete. He lay there unmoving, heart pounding, only somewhat aware of what was happening around him. He groaned.

            “Looks like that was effective,” said Bingwei. “Get him to the bunkhouse. He won’t need dinner.”

            Mako felt himself being pulled to his feet, and someone slapped him across the face. “Pull yourself together, soldier!”

            When he opened his eyes, the other benders were gone. Bingwei and the two women from the compound were there, holding him upright. He shivered, cold and terrified, and Bingwei grasped him roughly by the arm. Bingwei half carried, half dragged him back to the bunkhouse.

_Was I seeing things?_

            Yaozhu, Chen, Jing, Fa, and the others were already there, dressed comfortably in their nightclothes, occupied with washing their uniforms. Bingwei said nothing when he threw Mako into the room, but closed and locked the door behind him with a cold glare to the group. Mako lay on the floor until Yaozhu knelt at his side.

            “Are you all right, friend?” asked the boy. “Can I wash your uniform for you?”

            Mako groaned and accepted help to his feet, feeling a self-conscious wreck. Yaozhu gingerly assisted him in getting his coat off, and Mako changed into his nightclothes as the combustion bender began to wash.

            “Where were you all day?” Chen asked. His voice was surprisingly deep considering how lame he looked. Mako had expected him to sound a bit nerdy.

            Mako lie back on his bunk, his forearm draped over his eyes. “They put me in a conditioning chamber,” he said, his voice a raspy whisper. Apparently he had screamed himself hoarse.

            “What’s that?” Yaozhu asked.

            “You’ve never heard of conditioning?” Mako said as much as asked, incredulous. “Have you ever trained an animal?”

            “No.”

            “I have!” Fa exclaimed happily. “My dad used to have a little pack of deer dogs and we used to take them for walks—”

            Mako continued without acknowledging Fa had spoken. “Conditioning is when you force someone—or something, in an animal’s case—to connect feelings with certain other things. Say you really like buffalo yak steaks—“

            “I’m a vegetarian,” Yaozhu interrupted.

            With a groan, Mako continued, “Just for the sake of example, say a person really likes buffalo yak steaks. But every time you go to take a bite another person hurts you in some way…Eventually, and without ever even knowing it, you’ll begin to dislike buffalo yak steaks because you connect the steak to the pain.”

            “Oh.”

            The response left Mako underwhelmed.

            “How long was I gone?” Mako said.

            “All day,” said Chen helpfully. “We’ve all been back for a few hours now, they said we had earned leisure time.”

            “What did they do to you?” Mako asked. “In that building, what did they do to you?”

            Yaozhu answered this time. “We were all separated, but I guess we all got the same treatment. They asked us what we thought of the Captain, and I said I didn’t think he was a bad guy—a little bit strict maybe, but that’s his job as a Captain. Then they asked us who we thought should lead our squad. Everyone said that you ought to be the one to do it because you seem to be the strongest of all of us.”

            Mako sat up on his elbows and regarded Yaozhu carefully. “You what now?”

            “We told the people, all of us individually, that we thought you should be the leader of our squad.”

            “But the Captain…”

            Chen jumped in to clarify, “Yaozhu means that once we’re assigned our jobs, after training, you’ll be in charge.”

            “I don’t _want_ to be in charge,” Mako replied, incensed. “I _want_ to go home. I want to talk to my brother! I want to let my friends know I’m not dead!”

            Fa’s ratty face narrowed into a frown. “That attitude is getting us in a lot of trouble,” he said sternly. “Not all of us enjoy being here, but we’ve got no choice now. They told me they’d kill my family if I don’t cooperate. I want my family to live, so I’m going to cooperate, and you need to do the same.”

            Yaozhu stopped his washing for a moment and shot a tentative glance at Mako. “I’m a little tired of being hit when you mess things up, too,” he said. “I’m trying my best, I want to be successful here so I can get back to my family. I want to bring them honor, but I spend as much time being punished for what you’ve done wrong than I do being praised for carrying my weight. You said you’d be my friend, but the way you’re acting and the way you’re getting us in trouble…It’s not very friendly at all.”

            Dumbstruck, Mako flailed for words. He already felt guilty for subjecting the others to poor treatment at his expense and had tried his best to remain more subdued in his defiance, but now they were asking him to give up completely, to adhere to the rules, to _lead_ them. Coupled with the physical exhaustion, the delirium from the conditioning chamber, the sleeplessness, and the hunger, Mako could barely think straight anyway.

            “If I’m going to lead you, then I need to know you’re going to work with me first,” he said suddenly, an idea bursting into his mind. It was a risk, but if these men were as malleable as Mako thought... “I need your help.”

            “With what?” Yaozhu asked, having resumed washing.

            Mako produced the note from beneath his pillow and brandished it at the others. “This is my last act of defiance. Before I left the quarantine center I overheard Guan—“

            “His Excellency, Guan,” Yaozhu corrected.

            “Whatever…I heard him say that they’re going to try and kill my little brother. That _cannot_ happen, and as long as I know he’s in danger you bet I’m going to fight my way out of here. This note is a warning to him to be on the lookout. If you want me to calm down, if you want me to lead you and help you and make you better members of this stupid society, you’re going to help me get this letter out into the world.”

            The eight other men stared at him, wide eyed and disbelieving. Yaozhu was the first to grant Mako a tentative nod, then Chen, then the others in turn.

            “We’ll need to stun a hawk.”


	9. Home at Last

            A pair of heavily armored Republic City metalbenders stood vigil on every corner, accented here and there by the bright red overcoats of United Forces soldiers called in for backup. The many bridges, while notably open, swarmed with people seeking entry into the heart of the city, yet barriers of stone and metal blocked their paths and filtered them through thickly guarded checkpoints. Perhaps the city had been reopened, but it seemed more locked down now than ever.

            Even Oogi met with some resistance upon entering into Republic City’s limits. By the time the air bison touched down on Air Temple Island half a dozen United Forces biplanes were tailing him, and a contingent of metalbenders and White Lotus sentries stood waiting for the rather large company to disembark. Unflappable, Tenzin was first to the ground and waved the guards away. When they hesitated, Korra jumped from the saddle and stood beside him defiantly.

            “If you truly think that the Avatar is going to cause harm to this city, you may want to look for another job,” Tenzin said sternly.

            The metalbenders left, and Tenzin and Korra helped the rest down.

            “Wow,” said Bolin once firmly on the ground, “they’ve really stepped up security around here.”

            Korra nodded grimly. “The reports on the radio made it sound like everything was getting back to normal, but I don’t think this is normal at all.”

            “Maybe we ought to go talk to Lin,” suggested Asami. “I’m sure she’s got a good reason for all of this. We can take my boat.”

            The three looked to Tenzin for suggestion, but he simply nodded his agreement while ushering his children inside. Korra asked the sentries to take their bags inside and led Asami and Bolin toward the docks. They set out with no small degree of trepidation.

            Upon reaching the city proper the trio met with another group of metalbenders demanding to know why and how they had bypassed the required security checkpoints into the city. Angry, Korra said, “I’m the Avatar,” and though they had to exchange confused and slightly stupid looks first, the metalbenders stood down.

            “Where’s Lin Beifong?” Asami asked them.

            “At the precinct,” said one of the metalbenders. “But you probably won’t be able to get in to see her.”

            “Oh, I’ll get in all right,” Korra said, and she led Asami and Bolin into the city.

            Once on the streets the three exchanged no more words with any metalbender, though any time they came to a street corner—often—they received shifty glances and more than one scathing comment about kids being out unsupervised. To their credit, however, the United Forces soldiers were cordial and friendly, treating them as the young adults they were and affording Korra the respect she was due.

            Unsurprisingly, a dozen metalbending officers stood on the stairs leading to the precinct. Korra barreled past them, ignoring their requests for _official clearance_ and _paperwork_. As if in both explanation and apology, Bolin pointed his thumb at her as they walked past and said, “She’s the Avatar.”

            Inside, the precinct was dead. Every desk in the main office was abandoned: no telephones rang, no radios crackled. The only light in the room filtered in through closed and shaded windows, casting an eerie orange hue over everything as though the world outside had been locked in perpetual twilight.

            Korra marched toward Beifong’s office and rapped on the door once before throwing it open. Lin sat behind her desk, her forehead resting against her right hand while the left held the receiver of her telephone a fair distance away from her ear. Even from the door, the three could hear an angry voice shouting over the line.

            Lin glanced up and motioned them into the room. She finished her phone call quickly and slammed the receiver back onto its base.

            “I’ve had just about enough of all this,” Lin said brusquely, as much greeting as anyone expected. She pressed her fingers against her temples in frustration. “I’ve got too much to worry about without Raiko breathing down my neck every second.”

            “What’s going on?” Korra asked, too stupefied by Lin’s apparent annoyance to remember her own anger at the policemen.

            “The city contractors started building up north this week and my metalbenders were supposed to be there providing assistance, but Raiko decided to bump up security everywhere. I’ve got a bunch of rookies out there manning checkpoints and watching every corner of the city all day and night. Add on to that the United Earth Nation summit and I don’t have a single detective in here for when I get a _real_ call.”

            “Oh.”

            Lin regarded Korra curiously, and only now that she looked up did she notice Asami and Bolin were standing behind Korra. She nodded her greetings at Asami while her gaze came to rest, perhaps kindly now, on Bolin.

            “How’re you doing, kid?” she asked, calmer.

            “Better,” Bolin replied plainly. The truth was that he was tired of answering that particular question. “What’s the _United Earth Nation summit_?”

            Lin waved her hand dismissively and explained, “All the newly elected representatives from the old Earth Kingdom are coming to the city to meet with President Raiko. Some ceremonial nonsense he and Wu came up with, I’m sure. Su tells me that they’re supposed to discuss where they want to take the Earth Nation or some political mumbo-jumbo like that, figure out what’s going to be done with Ba Sing Se. I just want my city to be safe and here they are slapping a big red target on it.”

            “That means Su is coming to Republic City?” Korra said, a hint of joy in her voice.

            “Yeah, and she’s bringing the family,” Beifong replied. Her spirits did not seem lifted by the thought of family visitation, though she shot a glance at Bolin. “When do you suppose you’ll be ready to work?”

            Bolin shrugged. Now that he had his bending back, he supposed it didn’t matter. There was no reason to sit at home—he didn’t have Mako to entertain him or keep him company anymore and he figured that Korra and Asami would have to get back to their respective businesses as well, particularly if world leaders were coming to call. “I guess I’m ready whenever you’re ready for me to start.”

            Beifong raised a brow inquisitively. “You sure?”

            Again, Bolin shrugged. “May as well. It’ll keep my mind busy, and that was Katara’s parting wisdom.”

            “Smart lady.”

            “Yeah.”

            Beifong looked to Korra and Asami passively as if searching for some additional clarification. When nothing came, she continued, “You’ll be working on a team with Wing and Wei when they arrive tomorrow. Most of downtown is ruined, and we need to bring down buildings so that the spirit wilds can reopen safely. Raiko has to have his tourist attraction, you know, and it’s killing him that we can’t charge taxpayers for tours.”

            Bolin felt slightly crestfallen at this news. He had been expecting to participate in the erection of _new_ structures, not as a demolitionist.

            “Look,” Beifong said, “I’ve seen what you can do, I saw it firsthand against Kuvira. Aside from Su and me, you’re the best-qualified person to bring down those buildings.”

            “I can’t just push them over,” Bolin protested, referencing the time more than a month prior where he, Su, and Lin knocked the top half of a skyscraper onto Kuvira’s enormous mech suit.

            “No, you can’t,” Lin agreed. “Since you can’t metalbend we’ve had some people working on making some earth discs for you to lavabend with that’ll cut through metal for us. You’ll be in charge of precision work while Wing and Wei remove nonessential supports.”

            “I don’t need _special earth discs_ ,” Bolin replied casually.

            Beifong shrugged. “Wasn’t my call, kid. I told them who we hired and the contractors supplied the parts. You get what you get, and if you use it great. We’ll show the three of you how to bring the buildings down safely tomorrow, and then it’ll be up to you to get things done on time.” Then she looked to Korra and said, “You ought to go visit with Raiko. I’m sure he’s got something for you to do during this summit.”

            The statement was as blunt as Lin would be in asking the lot of them to leave. Gruff as the chief was, she had never been outright rude.

            Korra pouted. “I suppose you’re right,” she said, then turned to leave with Asami on her heels. When Bolin did not follow, Korra turned back around. “Are you coming?”

            The earthbender shot a glance back at his companions and shook his head decisively. “I’ll meet you back at Air Temple Island.”

Hesitantly, Korra and Asami left. Lin cast Bolin a suspicious eye, and once the door clicked   shut behind him, Bolin assumed a new and entirely different posture. He planted both palms flat atop Beifong’s desk and leaned over just slightly, imposingly, though the expression on his face remained impassive.

            “What have you found out?” he asked simply.

            Beifong blinked a few times as if confused, as if uncertain what to say. Then she leaned back in her chair with a deep sigh and shrugged, threw up her hands in defeat. “Nothing.”

            “What do you mean, _nothing_?” Bolin snapped at once. His expression shifted toward frustration. “It’s been more than a week; you got a letter from the guy who did it!”

            “ _Raiko_ got the letter, not me,” Beifong said, slightly irate herself. “Have you read _anything_ in the papers?”

            Slightly ashamed, Bolin shook his head. “I’ve been a little disconnected,” he cleared his throat, awkward, but then continued with conviction. “But I’m ready to be back in the loop.”

            Beifong produced a stack of paper clippings from a drawer in her desk and laid them out. Then she picked one out of the pile and said, “This statement was received the day after the explosion but it wasn’t published for a few days after that. It says: Consider this an open letter to the citizens of the world. I am a representative of a group known as the Democratic Society of Firebenders, and our mission is simple: We wish to liberate firebenders of all nationalities and subspecialties from the rule of the _lesser_ earthbenders, airbenders, waterbenders, and particularly nonbenders. The Hundred Year War marked the pinnacle of firebending power, and its end dragged our race to the ground. Firelord Izumi continues to suppress us, the establishment of Republic City served to polarize and demonize us. We will stand for it no longer. No longer will we act in service to those who do not appreciate our power…”

            Bolin interrupted her, “And you have no idea who sent this letter?”

            “It was anonymous,” Lin replied, letting the clipping fall back to the desk. “It goes on for a while, talks about how they’ll use any means necessary to liberate firebenders from _tyranny_ or some nonsense.”

            “It reads like a statement of war.”

            Lin shrugged haplessly. “May as well have been.”

            Bolin sagged into the chair opposite her and rubbed his face with the heels of his hands. “So let me get this one thing straight then, I want to make sure I understand,” he took a deep breath to calm himself. When next he spoke it was with very finely restrained anger. “You, or the President, got this statement, the _Republic City Press_ has been covering the explosion since it happened, _my brother died_ , and you’ve got no idea who sent the letter and no policemen investigating it?”

            “Look, you’ve got to understand that my hands are tied here,” Lin protested. “The attack happened on Earth Nation soil, not in Republic City, President Rai—“

            Bolin slammed his fist on the table, quieting Lin mid word. “No, you look. You’re _Lin Beifong_. You’re the chief of police of the greatest city in the world and one of _your_ men died on a job _you_ assigned him. I’ll make this as clear as I possibly can for you, because I guess things have gotten so crazy around this place that you can’t see straight. If you don’t investigate this thing, or get _someone_ on the job, I’m dropping your stupid demolitions contract and heading to Ba Sing Se myself.”

            Lin blinked dumbly. “What’s got into you?”

            Bolin’s eyebrows raised with disbelief, but he said nothing. He felt too angry to say anything.

            “I’ll make you a deal,” Lin said firmly, her composure regained. “This summit they’re having is partway in response to the attack. You give me a couple of days to see what these elected officials want to do, who they’re going to send in to investigate, and how they’re going to handle it. I’ll let you know everything I find out. Once the decision has been made if you still think you’re going to march against a bunch of lunatic terrorists singlehandedly—and get yourself killed in the process, I’ll add—you can go right ahead.”

            Bolin narrowed his eyes at her, trying to understand. Occasionally he found Beifong’s tone difficult to read. Sarcasm or not, he decided that he was satisfied with her deal and nodded his approval, then turned to leave. As he closed the door he said gruffly, “I’ll see you at eight o’clock tomorrow morning.”

            As soon as he exited, Bolin felt the rims of his eyes growing warm. He blinked hard and set his jaw firmly against the anger. He could not understand how Lin could be so passive. In the past she had done all sorts of illegal, daring, and often rash things to preserve the law and order and safety of her city and those she cared for. Didn’t she care? Or was this explosion, this _Society_ more than she could handle?

            He spent the long walk back to Air Temple Island fuming with his eyes on the street. One police officer attempted to stop him, but Bolin shot the man such an icy look that the cop stopped dead on the spot and said not another word. He caught a ferry to Air Temple Island without much fuss—the checkpoint line to the island was notably shorter than others—but did not go inside when he arrived. Instead, he ferried to Avatar Aang Memorial island, marched solemnly to the foot of Avatar Aang’s Statue, and sat resolutely on the ground in front of Mako’s grave, his body inches from the mound.

            He stared at it for a long time, examining the grassless earth piled atop Mako’s box. The heap was clumped and brown and uneven, and for the briefest of moments Bolin considered bending the earth into alignment. Instead he reached out and grasped a handful of dirt, let it run through his fingers, and began to smooth the terrain manually. He pinched muddy clumps into fine grains, removed large tilled stones to a pile at his side, and patted each inch of the grave until it was firmly packed and neat.

            Bolin forgot his anger as he worked, focusing instead on handling his element more intimately than he had in many years. By the time he sat back and admired his finished work his hands were caked with mud in every crease, his fingernails had stained browned to the quick, his face was streaked here and there where he had wiped away tears or sweat or both. He sat cross-legged, draped his filthy hands over his knees, and watched the setting sun move shadows over the soil.

            “I’m sorry,” he said finally to the now elegant, if simple looking grave. “I’m sorry I didn’t bury you. And I’m sorry I’ve been so angry.” He looked at his hands as though ashamed and wiped at his eyes with the back of his wrist. The dirt stung. “You wouldn’t like the way I’ve been acting lately…I just don’t know what else to do. I don’t have anyone anymore.”

            Bolin sat silently for a while as if waiting for a response he knew would not come. He sighed and felt the familiar lump rising in his throat. This time he did not resist it. Wrapping his arms around his dirty knees he rested his head against them and breathed deeply before he broke.

            Everything Bolin had ever held in spilled out all at once. For the first time in ten days he was alone with no one to coddle him, no one to whom he had to present a front of strength and indomitability. He didn't have to be the little brother to everyone who never had one and never knew how to treat one; he didn't have to be anyone's excuse to remain strong.  For the first time since Mako's funeral he could mourn in peace.

            "I don't know what I'm going to do," he said when the initial burst of grief passed on, wiping again at his eyes with the back of his filthy hands. He shook his head and got to his feet, resolute. "No, I do know what I'm going to do. Beifong has until the end of this summit, and then I'm going to find whoever did this to you and I'm going to make them regret it." He sniffed and drew a deep breath. "Someone is going to get hurt."

            Bolin nodded to himself, lingered at the grave until he was certain his tears were spent, and made his way back to the airbender compound. The place was desolate--only a few acolytes roamed the halls on their way to bed--and so Bolin said nothing to anyone and no one questioned him as to his whereabouts all evening. This was as he wanted it: He was sick of answering everyone’s questions.

            He stopped first in the bathroom to wash and made a point against looking at himself in the mirror: He knew perfectly well what a wreck he must look. Two basins of water had gone opaque and brown by the time he felt clean enough to move on. He found Pabu in his room curled asleep at the foot of the bed, but when Bolin entered the fire ferret chittered and raised his head, and Bolin patted him.

            "It's been a long night, buddy," said the earthbender as he disrobed. "It's going to be longer tomorrow."

            Pabu yawned and laid his head back down, but Bolin picked the fire ferret up and held it aloft. Pabu gave a whine of protest.

            "Are you ready to go back home?" Bolin asked Pabu, and the fire ferret tilted his head confusedly. Bolin said, "It's been a long time since we were at the apartment, and I think I'm ready. I think I need some space. I'm sick of being babied to death."

            Pabu licked absently at Bolin's fingers, as if he didn't care one way or the other where they stayed, and Bolin placed him back down on the bed.

            "Yeah..." Bolin said with a sigh. He lay down atop the covers and closed his eyes to a fitful, restless sleep. The sunrise next morning came too fast for his liking, and it felt to him that he hadn't slept at all. Still, he rose and dressed in his gray jacket and breeches, tossed his dirty browns into a basket near the door, and went to the kitchen where Pema presently sat eating her own breakfast.

            "You're up early," she said smartly.

            "Starting work today," Bolin explained as he sat across from her. Within minutes an acolyte had a heaping plate of food before him. He tucked in greedily, suddenly keenly aware that he'd skipped more than one meal yesterday.

            "Korra and Asami missed you last night, they wanted you to go to dinner with them," Pema said after a while, when her own meal was finished and cleared away. "They went to that noodle place you like so much."

            Bolin shrugged and pushed his unfinished meal away with a glance toward the clock. "You know I appreciate you letting me stay here," he said carefully, and Pema watched him with such absolute attention that he felt self-conscious, "but I think I'm ready to go home. I'm kind of glad I missed dinner with Korra and Asami. They've been--smothering me a little..."

            Pema smiled. "I wondered when you'd get tired of it," she said. "I'll pass on the news when everyone wakes up, and I'll have the acolytes take your things back to your apartment."

            Bolin nodded and stood, ran his fingers through his hair. "I really do appreciate it, you know. I'm not just saying that to be nice."

            "Oh, we know. Just promise you won't be a stranger, okay?"

            Bolin returned Pema's smile genuinely. "Of course not," he said. "We've got a lot of work to do to clean up after Kuvira, and you know as well as I do that I don't cook half as well as the acolytes."

            They shared a laugh, and Bolin left feeling heartened.

            He arrived at the precinct at fifteen minutes till eight and sat ignored in the empty lobby amongst the day's first shift officers. Beifong arrived at five till eight, and Wing and Wei followed her ten minutes later, bleary eyed but seemingly ready to work.

            The twins greeted Bolin with smiles and hearty handshakes, though Wing yawned in the middle of his "Hello." To their credit, neither twin mentioned a thing about Mako, and neither asked any variant of "How are you?" Bolin wondered if Su had coached them on post-death etiquette.

            Beifong hustled the three into a police car and started the drive downtown. "I won't be around after I leave you three today," she explained gruffly. "I'll be at the Earth Summit with Suyin trying to figure things out. You'll have a police radio on site with you at all times in case you need something."

            On site, Bolin could see several other groups of people already inside buildings, bending away metal sheeting and using plasma cutters on supports. Beifong handed each of them a modestly sized rucksack, explaining that in it were their radios and supplies they might need. She escorted them to the highest level of their first building and carefully explained the method by which they would take them down: dismantle the inner structures, leave the walls as support, and knock down one floor at a time. Descend and repeat until the building was finished, then move on.

            She left, and the boys got to work without words. Bolin examined the contents of his rucksack and found two discs of quartzite rock: one flat and thin and perfectly circular, the other with thick serrations around its outside. Someone had taken pride in their work, as the discs had been polished and buffed until they shined. With a shrug, Bolin tried each disc, spinning it round between his outstretched palms until it glowed red hot and lost its rocky consistency. He found the smooth stone to have better balance, and used it all morning to cut through all manner of material.

            By lunch, the three had taken down five stories of the seven-story building, and they sat amongst the ruins sharing what food Suyin had provided for Wing and Wei. Bolin hadn't even considered bringing anything.

            "You know, Opal is pretty excited to see you," Wei said through a mouthful of steam bun.

            Bolin nodded. Too many days with the airbenders had his table manners at their best. He swallowed hard before saying, "What is she doing?"

            "She's at the summit with mom," Wing explained.

            Wei continued, "She wants Opal to learn about politics, but Opal isn't very interested."

            "Opal doesn't seem like a political person," Bolin said.

            "She's not," the twins said as one, and then they exchanged a look between them and laughed.

            Bolin had expected work to be tiring and monotonous, but the time he spent with the twins had him in exceptionally high spirits. On their first day they brought down two buildings while gently ribbing each other and making small talk about pro-bending. More than once the twins poked fun at Bolin's inability to metalbend, but Bolin quieted them with a good natured toss of his lava disc that came a bit too close for them to feel comfortable. They parted ways that night with more handshakes, and Bolin stopped for take out on the way home.

            Even the apartment couldn't stifle his decent mood. Pabu waited atop the pile of his things the acolytes had brought from the island, and they ate seaweed noodles together on the couch that he and Mako had once shared, bathed in the bathroom where Mako's towel still hung disused on the rack, and slid into bed without a glance at Mako's unoccupied twin.

            The second day went much as the first, except that Bolin began on a full night’s sleep and managed to salvage enough leftovers from his takeout that he didn’t need to borrow lunch. Wing and Wei informed him that Opal wanted to see him that evening, and through the rest of the day Bolin’s stomach gave an occasional nervous lurch whenever he thought of seeing her. It had been a long time, after all, and he wasn’t sure he was ready for romantics.

            Still, that evening Opal arrived at the apartment after dark carrying a parcel full of sweets she’d taken from the summit and greeted Bolin with an infectious smile and a kiss on the cheek that made his whole face feel warm. They sat on the couch picking at the sweets for a while in awkward silence.

            “So how was the summit?” Bolin asked after a while.

            Opal shrugged. “Boring. Full of old people and politics. How are you?”

            Bolin frowned. “Tired of hearing that question.”

            “Oh, sorry.”

            “No, no,” he backtracked immediately. “That’s not what I meant. I don’t know, I guess I just want things to be normal.”

            Opal put her hand atop his and patted it comfortingly. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be here for you when you needed me.”

            Bolin wanted to say it was okay, because Korra and Asami had supplied more than enough comfort for him, but he decided that such a statement could only end badly. Instead he shrugged the comment away and contemplated briefly on how to turn the conversation away from recent events.

            Opal made the decision for him. Before he could open his mouth to speak she had leaned in toward him for a kiss that in any other situation might have been completely normal, even passionate. But no sooner had her lips connected with his than he felt his stomach turn to water, and he recoiled as if on instinct. She looked immediately hurt, and he held his hands up in defense.

            “I—I’m sorry,” he stammered as his face went pink. “I wasn’t expecting that.”

            “Do I need to warn you next time?” Opal grinned mischievously despite her initial alarm and leaned in for another try.

            Bolin took her by the shoulders and held her at a respectful distance. “Opal, no.” He said forcefully, then stood and backed away from the sofa. He wanted to run. He recognized the feeling in his gut as fear, but could not understand why it was there. It only intensified as the look on Opal’s face grew more extreme. “I can’t do this right now,” Bolin continued, frantically trying to explain away his anxiety. “I’m sorry. This is my fault, I’m just not ready.”

            “We haven’t seen each other in almost a month,” Opal protested, yet her expression softened slightly. “I thought you would—“

            Bolin shook his head. “I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad you came over. I just can’t…” he shook his head again.

            “What’s wrong?”

            “I’m afraid,” Bolin said before he could think, and then added in afterthought, “of being close to people right now.”

            “Oh,” Opal said, and she stood. “I guess I’ll leave, I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

            On one hand, Bolin wanted to protest. He felt sick. All he had wanted for the last weeks was to see Opal, but now that she was here he couldn’t overcome this strange nervousness. He remained quiet instead and watched as Opal made her way to the door.

            “You call me when you aren’t afraid anymore, okay?” she said softly. “Take the time you need, and if you want to talk, we can. I’ll let you take the wheel on this.”

            Bolin nodded and held his breath until Opal left, then slumped onto the sofa with tears in his eyes. He may have messed things up, but at least he hadn’t let her see him cry.

  



	10. Control

            Korra spent the first day of the Earth Nation summit sitting between Suyin and Lin Beifong bored half out of her mind. The orders of business in politics became monotonous early on, beginning with the appointment of a delegation leader whose duty would be to communicate the Earth Nation’s decisions to the world as a representative of the whole. Su was nominated and elected almost unanimously—she was the only dissenting vote—and she agreed to serve only until Prince Wu could assume the position. She argued it would only be fair, since the kingdom had at one point been his own and she believed that the royal family should still serve the people even in democracy. No one disagreed.

            Next order was for a statement from the Avatar, which Korra gave reluctantly and without preparation, wishing for the good faith and effort of all those elected to the council to create a better Earth Nation for its citizens. The remarks were awkward for Korra’s liking, and she felt slightly stupid standing before a group of people easily twice her age. She kept things short, however, and afterward the proceedings moved forward without fuss.

            Things only grew interesting once talk turned to the disaster in Ba Sing Se. Everyone in attendance expected the topic to be discussed in depth, but Suyin argued that its handling should be the first official decision made by the Earth Nation Council, as that was the most pressing matter at hand. Most agreed that the issue was both dire and in need of consequence, but none could agree on how to conduct an investigation or what the punishment should be, assuming they ever unmasked the perpetrator.

            “We don’t even know what happened,” argued Xiu Rei Huan of the Gaoling province. “All we’ve got is hearsay and biased reporting from the press. The only survivor in the upper ring was Wu, and…Well…”

            The representative from Omashu, a younger man named Qin, grew angry with this. “We know exactly what happened,” he said hotly. “Some lunatic firebender set an explosion in the ruins of the royal palace and blew half the city to bits. That’s a measure of war!”

            “Firelord Izumi issued her statement on the matter,” Suyin mediated coolly. “She told us that the perpetrators have no affiliation with the Fire Nation and should be considered radicals. She doesn’t approve of the attack any more than we do.”

            “So how do we go about _finding_ these people if we don’t know who they are and we don’t know where they’re at?” asked Xiu.

            Korra interrupted thoughtfully, “Well, the newspapers printed that letter from the—“ she searched for the name of the organization and looked to Lin when her thoughts came up short.

            “Democratic Society of Firebenders,” Lin prompted, deadpan.

            “Yeah, them,” Korra affirmed at once, “I guess you all read it, too. It said they wanted to liberate firebenders who were in service to others.”

            “Avatar Korra,” said Qin gruffly, “what’s your point here? We all read the letter, we know exactly what it said.”

            Korra bristled uncomfortably. “If you’d let me finish…” she heaved a sigh at the upstart representative and shifted in her seat, assuming a more aggressive posture. People responded to her when she looked confident. “We’ve got to lure these guys out of hiding. If there’s a way that we can get a big group of firebenders together and make it _look_ like they’re working under the Earth Nation we can…”

            “Absolutely not,” said a third representative, Na Zhang. She was a stately woman nearing sixty who reminded Korra very much of the Firelord. “Between Kuvira’s camps and the Ba Sing Se incident we’ve lost more than enough Earth Nation lives,” she said forcefully, “I don’t think any of us would invite another attack on our soil.”

            “We could send in Republic City police forces,” Korra suggested and looked to Lin for support.

            Lin shook her head resolutely. “I’ll tell you the same thing I told Bolin: The President ordered me to keep my guys in the city. This isn’t our fight. The attack wasn’t in Republic City’s territory. We’ll offer our full support where we can, but we can’t send our men into the line of fire.”

            “You sent Mako into the line of fire,” Korra mumbled under her breath, and this time it was Lin who bristled. Korra turned her attention back to Zhang and spoke before Lin could argue, “So what do you suggest we do then?”

            “It could be that this was a one-time attack,” said Zhang contemplatively. “We’ve not seen aggression on this large of a scale before.”

            “There’ve been kidnappings and reports of armed confrontation in smaller regions, though,” said Suyin. “Lately we haven’t been able to investigate them thoroughly. It could be that these smaller incidents are connected.”

            “It’s all speculation!” roared Qin.

            Korra sighed. This argument, she could see, was going nowhere. Indeed she sat for another hour and a half before lunch break, wordlessly listening to the back-and-forth arguments from the Earth Nation delegates, half of who wished to retaliate against the Firebending Society and half of who wanted to wait for further aggression to strike. To her credit, Suyin remained the neutral mediator, prodding her colleagues to elaborate on arguments and offer sound reasoning for their opinions, but few did, and the summit dismissed for lunch with tensions high.

            The whole building felt cold. Lin hadn’t said a word to Korra since the Avatar’s underhanded jab at her during the meeting, and the chief still looked irate. Korra wondered more than once as they were served their lunch whether she had gone too far with her statement.

            The afternoon did not improve anyone’s mood, but it did bring Opal, who came as welcome relief. At least with her around Korra would have someone of a similar age and mindset to talk to. They sat apart from Lin and Su, as Lin had yet to break her silent treatment, and whispered to each other about things almost entirely unrelated to the current proceedings.

            Small talk about life in general turned to specific talk about Mako’s funeral, which Korra described in full detail. When Korra explained Bolin’s lost and subsequently regained bending Opal’s eyes began to glisten. Korra stopped and patted her on the hand. At afternoon break Opal made clear that she would be going to visit Bolin at his apartment that evening, and informed her mother that she would be out late. Suyin happily approved.

            Next day matters intensified. President Raiko interrupted the morning session by barging into the room and demanding Korra and Lin see him immediately. Apparently Wu had waked and was asking to see them personally. The summit continued on, dealing with less important matters like taxation and borderlines under Suyin’s leadership, while Korra, Lin, and Opal ventured to the hospital.

            When the ladies entered, Wu greeted them with his traditional gusto: “Ladies,” he drew out the word a bit too long, “so good to see you!” He seemed in high enough spirits and Korra noted with interest that he seemed, except for an exceptionally large bruise covering the right side of his face, to be no worse for the wear.

            “You don’t look _hurt_ ,” Lin said skeptically. “What do you want?”

            Wu pouted slightly. “I wanted to talk to the _Avatar_ about what happened…” he said formally, but trailed off as if slightly confused.

            “You’ve been unconscious for a while,” Korra explained. “It’s been almost two weeks.”

            Wu’s confusion intensified. “Where’s Mako?”

            Lin, Opal, and Korra exchanged looks full of meaning, but Opal was the one to speak out. “Mako—didn’t make it,” she said. “There was a funeral for him last week. I’m sorry.”

            “What?” Wu cried, indignant. “That can’t be right.”

            “What do you mean _that can’t be right_ ,” Lin rebutted angrily. “The body’s already buried. I looked at it.”

            Wu pouted again, “But Mako,” his voice turned suddenly dreamy as he thought, “the best bodyguard a guy could ask for…He protected me! I saw him!”

            “Yeah, he protected you all right,” said Lin. “Right into the ground.”

            Now Wu sat up, his gaze on Korra. “No, no, don’t listen to her! You’ve got to believe this; we’ve got to help him out! I got hit in the head, right? Some flying boulder or plaster from the building, heck I don’t know what it was because the fireball was so bright I couldn’t see anything. But Mako…” his voice seemed to take on the same dreamy tone anytime he said Mako’s name. “He took the blast for me, firebent the explosion away from me! I don’t know what it was he did exactly but he protected me!”

            Korra offered no reply when Wu paused, but crossed her arms over her chest instead. Thus far his story contained no new information at all and seemed entirely ordinary. She wasn’t impressed.

            “I don’t remember a lot because I fell down,” Wu replied, almost frantic, his flippant attitude dropped entirely. “Like I said, I got hit in the face,” he pointed at the bruise for emphasis. “But I saw them. Mako passed out and someone grabbed him! Before I fainted I saw them take him away! I tried to yell ‘Mako down!’ but nobody around me was moving either!”

            Korra looked to Lin skeptically, and Lin returned the expression. This piece of information _was_ new.

            “How can we be sure you know what you’re talking about?” Lin pressed urgently. “You just said you got smacked in the head.”

            “I know what I saw,” Wu said gravely. “And I saw Mako being taken away. That guy is the best friend I’ve ever had—heck he’s the _only_ friend I’ve ever had—and I know what I saw!”

            Again, Korra looked to Lin, reading her expression for any doubt. What Korra saw in Lin’s eyes was professionally masked surprise. This alarmed the Avatar: It was not often that Lin Beifong was caught off guard by anything. But this news, if indeed it was true, brought new urgency to an already dire situation.

            “Do you have any proof that what you think happened is what really happened?” asked Opal gently while Korra and Beifong stared at each other. “Is there anyone else who can confirm?”

            Wu shook his head, calmer now. “I don’t know.”

            Seemingly settled, Lin rounded back on Wu and assumed a defensive posture. “We’ll look into what we can,” she said officially, “but you’ll be needed at the Earth Summit as soon as you’re ready.”

            “What Earth Summit?”

            “The elections went on as planned,” Korra explained, placing a hand on Lin’s shoulder to placate her. She felt Lin relax a bit beneath her touch. “All the elected officials are here in Republic City for a meeting to determine what they’re going to do with the Earth Nation. They want you to be their voice to the people.”

            Wu’s expression brightened significantly. There was little he seemed to enjoy more than press attention. “All right!”

            “I’ll let them know at the summit that you’re awake and talking. We’ll see if the hospital will discharge you to begin your duties tomorrow,” said Lin, and she escorted Korra and Opal from the room before Wu could say another word.

            The three returned to the conference after lunch and did not have a chance to speak with Su until much later in the evening. When the summit recessed for the night, Opal, Lin, Su, and Korra gathered at the precinct to discuss Wu’s message privately. All parties agreed that some investigation should take place as soon as possible, and Su mentioned briefly the possibility of exhuming the corpse they had buried to double check that they had identified the body correctly. Without witnesses they had no other way to be certain. The subject caused Lin to look slightly perturbed.

            “I don’t want to dig it up. I examined that thing as much as I could stomach,” said the chief, “but it was downright disgusting.”

            “Bolin verified it was Mako,” Korra agreed. “Didn’t he?” As far as she was aware the case was open and shut.

            Lin shook her head, much to Korra’s surprise. “He went in the room, took one look at the body and nearly passed out. There wasn’t a lot of examination on his end. Never seen him so pale in my life.”

            Until this point Opal had remained quiet and pensive. When she spoke she did so softly, always softly, but with conviction in her voice that no one could argue. “We need to tell him,” she said. “We need to tell Bolin that there’s a chance—“

            “No!” Lin snapped. “No way. We’re not telling him anything until I’ve got hard evidence to prove it.”

            Korra slumped into one of the chairs and rested her head against her hand. “I hate to say it, Opal, but I agree with Lin. I don’t want to sound mean, but you haven’t been around here lately, you haven’t seen how this is affecting him.”

            “You told me he lost his bending,” Opal protested. “But it came back! And of course he was upset but—“

            “Kid’s darn near lost his mind,” Lin said. “Doesn’t know down from up right now. This? Knowing there’s a chance Mako is alive? He can’t know until we’re absolutely certain it’s true.”

            “But that’s cruel!” Opal cried.

            Korra shook her head. “No, it’s not. What would be cruel would be to give him hope after all he’s been through. He’s just on the upswing now, he’s getting better, he moved back home, has gone to work. If we tell him there’s a chance Mako is alive and then it turns out that chance was a lie…” Again she shook her head. Korra didn’t dare entertain the possibility. Bolin was as much a brother to her as anyone had ever been. Seeing him knocked back down as soon as he got to his feet was more than she could bear.

            Opal looked to her mother, but Su just shrugged. “Opal, I know this is hard,” said Suyin, “but Lin and Korra know best right now. They’re right: We haven’t been here. You’ve only seen Bolin once, just last night, and you said that he—“

            “He was just scared!” Opal cried. Tears rimmed her eyes again.

            Korra looked between Su and Opal, suddenly quite alert. She remembered clearly Bolin’s explosive and wholly unexpected rage at the South Pole, the moment in which his bending came back more powerful than she’d ever seen it before. Her stomach sank and she feared the worst. Had he lashed out at Opal?

            “What happened?” Korra asked tenderly.

            By now Opal had lost her restraint and was sobbing openly. “He was just afraid!” she cried, her head in her hands. “I tried to…And he said no and he sounded kind of angry…But nothing _happened_. He’s just afraid to lose someone else!”

            Su wrapped Opal in a tight hug and rubbed her back. “Now listen, Opal,” she cooed, “you’re exactly right. He _was_ scared, and he probably still is. Wing and Wei said the exact same thing when they checked in with me over lunch today. Bolin isn’t stable right now, he’s keeping his distance and that’s perfectly healthy. Getting him worked up all over again isn’t going to help him. We’ve got to keep this quiet for now.”

            “I don’t know what to do!” Opal continued. “I just want to make him feel better!”

            Su looked between Korra and Lin. Korra shrugged her reply and Su stroked Opal’s hair, then said, “You do what you can for him when he needs you, okay? You’ve always been good at helping people, and I know you can handle this. Until we say so, though, you can’t tell him what happened.”

            “It’s not fair!” Opal wailed.

            “None of this is fair, sweetheart,” Su comforted, “you’re right. Now look at me—that’s good—and promise me that no matter what happens you won’t mention anything to Bolin. I know you love him and I know it’s hard, but you have to keep quiet.”

            Opal nodded and pressed her face immediately back into her mother’s shoulder.

            “Excuse us,” Su said to Korra and Lin. “We need to go calm down a little. You two and I can discuss this issue more later. We’ll see you tomorrow at the summit, and hopefully we can get something done about Ba Sing Se and the investigation.”

            When Su was gone Lin practically collapsed into her chair and groaned. “We’d _better_ get something done tomorrow,” she said, “because if we don’t I’m going to have a very angry lavabender on my hands and that’s not something I’m equipped to deal with.”

            Again, Korra remembered the South Pole, and she heartily agreed.

 

*****

 

            The final day of the Earth Summit was by far the most productive. Though clad in unflattering hospital garb, Wu sat in a seat of honor between Avatar Korra and President Raiko. True to himself, the former monarch managed to fast-talk the delegates enough to come to several decisions even before lunch: He would be happy to act as reporter for the delegation as long as he had assistance and support from the others; Ba Sing Se would hire two hundred workers to reconstruct the broken upper ring; a group of Earth Nation citizens would be trained to investigate the explosion; and once their training had finished and the investigation was underway that group would train others to prevent acts of terrorism and respond if something happened again.

            The afternoon session saw a second meeting scheduled six months hence, and delegates were sent to work on their own terms to develop tax and law policies for their individual provinces. These policies would be submitted for review by a panel to make certain that all was fair and balanced.

            Nothing was said of Mako.

            Korra left that night with mixed feelings. Wu had impressed her even without meaning to: It seemed that in the last months he had grown as a human being. Even if she still couldn’t stand the thought of him, she felt proud that he had managed to accomplish something amongst the group of diverse delegates. All the same, she regretted that she hadn’t had a chance to speak with someone about Wu’s report. The idea that Mako could be alive and out in the world somewhere terrified her, especially when she considered whose hands he might have fallen into.

            Relief came shortly after dinner, when Lin called to Air Temple Island to report to Korra that she and Su were meeting at the precinct to discuss the matter, which Lin referred to simply as “the news.”

            With no explanation to anyone (and much protest from Asami, who had grown both bored and slightly worried) Korra left for the police station. When she arrived, Su and Lin were already engaged in conversation that seemed cordial enough.

            “We’ll have to let Tenzin know our intent,” Lin said, as if in the middle of explanation. She waved Korra into a second seat they had placed in front of Lin’s desk. “He’ll never allow us to disturb the land under his father’s monument unless we’ve got extremely good reason.”

            “I’d say this is reason enough,” Su agreed.

            Lin and Su did most of the talking and Korra listened raptly. The two schemed for a long time, brainstorming a variety of excuses to keep the exhumation out of the news and away from Bolin. Then, all at once, Lin turned to Korra.

            “Will you discuss this with Tenzin?” she asked. “I’d like to know what he thinks about the matter before we move forward with any plans.”

            Korra nodded. “I’ll let you know first thing tomorrow.”

            On the way through the lobby, Korra passed by a detective who moved with particular urgency. Confused, she continued on and stopped short upon entering the waiting area.

            “Bolin?”

            He was standing with his hands shoved in his pockets, apparently fresh from work. Sweaty, dirt-stained, and with a look of general exhaustion, he greeted her with a subdued, “Hey. What’s going on?”

            “Nothing. We just got done with the summit,” Korra lied. She recalled Lin saying something about Bolin’s visit but hadn’t expected to run into him firsthand, and definitely not so soon.

            “Good,” Bolin said darkly. “That’s what I wanted to talk to Lin about.”

            “Well, she’s back there,” Korra said, and pointed with her thumb toward Lin’s office. “I’ve got to get back to Air Temple Island. Asami’s going to kill me if I don’t spend some time with her.”

            “Have fun.”

            Nervously, Korra exited and watched through the doors as Bolin made his way toward the back of the office.

 

*****

 

            “Chief, Nuktuk is here to see you,” said the detective happily, poking his head into the office.

            Lin exchanged a dark look with Su, but Su nodded. “Send him in,” said Lin, but Bolin was already halfway through the door when she finished her statement, much to the surprise of the detective.

            “Nuktuk, can I have your auto—“

            Bolin slammed the office door in the detective’s face, and then he marched up to the desk without so much as a look to Su. He stared at Lin with a look so calm as to be unnerving. "Well," he said flatly, "what've you got?"

            Lin regarded him carefully and shot a surreptitious glance to Su, who presently scrutinized Bolin with the same curious expression. The door slamming directly contradicted the cool front he had suddenly taken on.

            "I told you I'd let you know when all the decisions were made," Lin replied.

            “The radio coverage of the summit finished over two hours ago, and I’ve been sitting around waiting. I'm tired of waiting. I need a decision,” he said, his frustration apparent.

            “Hello, Bolin,” Su said lightly, but the look he shot her quieted her immediately. It was a look Lin had never seen before, intense and reckless.

            “Just sit down and I’ll tell you everything we talked about all week,” Lin said in the same deadpan tone as always, as if Bolin’s anger was commonplace. Truly she was trying to diffuse the situation.

            Bolin did not sit.

“Things are going to go slower than you want,” Lin explained anyway, reclining slightly in her chair. Perhaps if she pressed on things would deescalate. “The Earth Nation is going to take full responsibility for the investigation by hiring citizens to—“

            “So you’ve got nothing,” interrupted Bolin hotly. “Three days of talking and you’ve got absolutely nothing.”

            “They’re going to train people to investigate,” Lin protested.

            “And how long is that going to take?” Bolin's voice flared resentfully. “It’s already been two weeks, we’ve got absolutely nothing. No clues, nobody looking at the site, nobody exploring options. We had a deal! You agreed!”

            Lin looked to Su pleadingly, hoping she might intervene before things got out of hand, and Su took charge on cue. Wordlessly, she walked around the desk and wrapped her arms around Bolin’s broad shoulders. It would be expected for him to relax at the comfortable touch, but instead a tension wound up in Bolin’s body. His muscles locked tight like he was preparing to strike out.

            “Don’t touch me,” he growled at Su, but made no move to pull away.

            Bolin looked as though he was radiating heat. His whole body trembled.

            “You need to calm down,” said Su quietly, in a motherly tone that Lin had never heard. “Yelling isn’t going to solve anything.”

            Bolin breathed very deep, his fists clenched at his sides. “I’m going to tell you one time… _Let. Me. Go_.” He emphasized every word.

            “We understand you’re upset,” Su cooed. She tried to usher him toward a chair. “Just relax. Nobody is going to hurt—“

            All at once Bolin wrenched himself away from her, rounding angrily, and Su stumbled and fell. For the briefest moment a look of shame flashed across Bolin’s face, but anger replaced it just as fast and the earthbender snapped completely. “What do _you_ know? What do you _care_?”

            Su looked dumbfounded, rooted to the spot on the ground where she had fallen. “What is wrong with you?” she cried, half terrified but genuinely concerned.

            Bolin ignored her and turned back on Lin. He pointed his finger at her forcefully while his free hand flexed in and out of a tightly coiled fist. All his carefully controlled composure seemed to have gone. “And _you_!” He stopped, seemingly too angry to think of an appropriate insult. “You want me to _wait?_ What do I have to wait for, Lin? What do I have at all? _Korra?_ No, she’s too busy with Asami to care about helping me. Asami’s too busy with Korra and her company! Tenzin's too busy doing airbender stuff! And you’re too busy with this stupid summit! I helped you! I’ve put my life on the line for _all of you_ , and now that I need you you’ve done nothing but kick me aside and hang me out to dry!”

            “You know that’s not true,” Su said, getting cautiously to her feet.

            “Shut up!” Bolin roared at her. “You aren’t a part of this!”

            If truth was told, Lin had said nothing because she honestly didn’t know what to say. She knew Bolin would be visiting her and had been thinking all day of how this encounter might play out, but nowhere in her wildest imagination did she believe the generally tenderhearted earthbender was capable of this kind of anger. She did not know how to calm him, and the longer he spoke the more uncomfortable she became, until she noted with shock that the floor beneath her feet had grown quite warm: The whole room had grown quite warm. She watched him flexing his fists, stretching each finger individually, flexing again, and stretching again. Both hands were working furiously at Bolin’s side.

            He had lost control.

            “Sit down!” Lin shouted with urgency as she stood, and though she was at the very least the same height as Bolin the sheer intensity of her voice made her huge. “You sit down right now!”

            Su seemed to have noticed the mounting danger. Her eyes were locked on the floor. A small area near Lin's desk had sunk downward and the stone seemed to be softening.

            "Why?" Bolin shouted, just as intensely. "You can't arrest me for yelling at you!"

            "No, but I _will_ arrest you for melting my precinct!"

            Bolin's eyes went suddenly wide, he balked at her. "What?"

            "Look at yourself!" Lin shouted in condemnation, unable to hide her indignation. "Look at what you're doing! You hit my sister! You made Opal cry! And now you're so far gone you've lost control! I don't care how upset you are; this is disgraceful! You should be ashamed to call yourself an earthbender!"

            All the fire went out at once, and Bolin's hands went slack. He shot a sheepish glance around the room, avoiding meeting Su's gaze at all costs, and seemed to realize at once that the warmth he had felt was not internal but instead came from the gradual heating of the earth around him. He looked back at Lin, terrified, and took a step back.

            "I don't know..." Bolin stammered, shaking his head madly. He raised his hands to cover his nose and mouth. He continued backing toward the door. "I don't understand..."

            Lin exchanged another look with Su. Again, she moved to help him into a chair but he recoiled and stumbled before she ever got close to him.

            "You need to sit down," Su said. "You need to calm down."

            "I'm so sorry," Bolin said. "I'm so sorry. I don't know what's happening. I just…"

            Su inched just close enough to grasp his hands, but again he pulled away, so distressed he could scarcely form a coherent word. This time he bolted.

            Lin looked to Su as soon as Bolin cleared the door. "I'm putting out an APB. We can't let him run around the city in this state. Go call Opal, warn her what happened here and tell her to be on the watch, and then call Asami and tell her the same. I'll call Air Temple Island and inform Tenzin and Korra." She blew a deep sigh and looked at her now cooling office. "I hate to think what he might do right now."

  



	11. Induction

            It took less than twenty-four hours for Yaozhu to make good on his promise to help Mako send his letter. It had happened quite suddenly during their leisure time. The lot of them had been in the yard, Yaozhu explaining the fundamentals of combustion bending to them, when the great red bird flew overhead. Without a word, Mako had run after it, Yaozhu close on his heels, and with a _pop_ the bird had suddenly dropped like a stone.

            “I hope you didn’t kill it,” Mako had said.

            They had the note attached and the bird revived within ten minutes, and Mako had watched it fly off toward Republic City. He only hoped it would maintain its course and reach Beifong in time.

            He was thankful it had happened so fast when, the very next morning, he was separated from his squad. They were off to the training field, to which Yaozhu departed with a jubilant wave, and he was escorted back to the dilapidated old building in which he’d suffered the conditioning chamber. In a large room, deep within, an officer instructed him to sit at the end of a bench that was otherwise completely occupied by men who appeared to be much older and much more receptive than he was, and this sent a nervous shiver through him.

            The room went dark and Mako felt every muscle in his body tense. This was how the conditioning had started. This was how the onslaught of the elements had happened, how he had been made to see things that were not there…

            But the wall before him lightened with a projection, not of still-framed firebenders, but a projection that _moved_. There was a countdown, and once it had ended an old, stern-faced man appeared and began to speak.

            “Welcome, all of you, to captain’s training,” said the man. The audio was fuzzy and riddled with crackles and distortion. “It is your honor to serve. You have been individually selected by your officers and your units to lead in the quest to rebuild the Fire Nation as it once was. This series will develop your skills in command and direction, in tactics and intelligence, so that you, too, can lead your brothers and sisters in fire to liberation.”

            Mako sighed. It was another propaganda film. Once the introduction had concluded, rather than promoting firebenders as a whole, it maintained an instructional tone. It advised them on the hierarchy, the mission, and the methodology employed by the Democratic Society of Firebenders, and Mako paid this particular attention. This was _intelligence_ , he realized, information that could be extremely useful if only he could get it back to Beifong.

            He decided to play along.

            The mover concluded after a time and the room brightened gradually. As the lights came up more men entered the room. Mako didn’t recognize any of them except for one: Bingwei. But he knew by their dress that all of them were legitimate officers, those who had completed this training and been fully assimilated into the society, and there was one officer for each trainee.

            Bingwei came to a halt in front of him and stared down with a look of appraisal. Mako did not meet his eyes.

            “With me, recruit,” Bingwei said curtly. “We’re to lunch.”

            Mako didn’t need to be told twice. He rose at once and followed Bingwei’s lead out of the dilapidated building and into the yard. The two exchanged no words, which Mako found slightly strange, but more than that he wondered who exactly was working with the other men in his squad if their captain was here.

            The mess hall was quiet. A few uniformed men lounged around tables far away from the entrance, and the metal trestle tables where he had taken his lunch on prior days sat completely empty. Mako expected to be seated here, but Bingwei continued to lead him through the hall, past the seated men, and into a small, private chamber with a round table and comfortable chairs.

            “Be seated at your leisure,” Bingwei said, and his voice had taken a tone unfamiliar to Mako. He didn’t sound angry. Stern, perhaps, but not hostile.

            Mako sat in the nearest chair and folded his hands on the table. He watched as Bingwei took a seat opposite. Then the two simply looked at each other in a silence that Mako might have called _strained_. It certainly was not awkward, there was no shame or embarrassment here, but there existed a tension that he could feel in every fiber of his being.

            “Well, daydreamer,” Bingwei said at last, a smug smirk finding its way to his face, “it seems we have to work together.”

            Though he had wanted to remain straight-faced, Mako felt his eyebrow instinctively raise in a look of skepticism and disbelief. It was the same automatic reaction he’d always had when Bolin said or did something stupid, and it came to him without a single thought. He said nothing.

            “At least you’ve learned to keep your mouth shut, if nothing else. At any rate, if it hasn’t become obvious to you at this point you’ve been chosen to become captain for the weak and pathetic men you know as your roommates. Well, not anymore. You’ll be housed in the officer’s dormitory beginning tonight. Your things are being moved as we speak. You’ll be bunking with me.”

            At this, Mako could not help but utter a confused, “What?”

            “It’s not to my liking either, sharing a space with a rat like you. But I’m under orders from His Excellency, and I will not defy him.”

            “But _you’re_ the captain.”

            “I’ll be promoted to commander.”

            All at once, two women entered the room with plates—real plates—filled with food the likes of which Mako had never seen. Was this Fire Nation fare? He’d only ever indulged in what little Republic City had to offer, and that was far from authentic, as he understood. What sat on his plate now was slightly alarming and entirely foreign: Three red-flecked dumplings, a mound of what looked like cabbage, and an enormous…Animal. To the side came a bowl of the same jasmine rice he’d grown accustomed to and a cup filled with a cloudy, milky beverage.

            At least he’d eat the rice.

            Bingwei tucked into his meal immediately but politely. He started with the dumplings, and Mako followed suit, nibbling tentatively at a corner and then examining its interior. The thing seemed safe enough, and Mako ate the rest in one.

            The spice hit him immediately. His whole face felt on fire; everything between his mouth and his stomach burned. His eyes were suddenly watery.

            “Not used to this kind of food, are you, daydreamer?” Bingwei smirked from across the table.

            Ignoring him, Mako grabbed for his cup and drained half of it before he’d even tasted the liquid. He slammed it back onto the table with a heaving breath, and stared at the food on his plate once more. Food wasn’t supposed to hurt. Food was supposed to taste good.

            “That was komodo dragon sausage inside. They’re quite good once you’ve acquired a taste for them.”

            Mako watched dumbfounded as Bingwei ate a whole dumpling in one bite. He seemed to be enjoying it and sipped delicately at his drink.

            “You can speak, you know,” Bingwei said after he’d swallowed. “You’re going to have to speak at some point.”

            All that Mako could utter was, “What _is_ this stuff?”

            With a great sigh of exasperation, Bingwei brandished his chopsticks and began pointing to the items on his plate. “I already told you the dumplings. This,” he pointed at the vegetable, “is cabbage, plain as day. This,” he pointed at the strange, lumpy, slightly slimy animal, “is a smoked sea slug. They’re quite the delicacy around here. You know our rice already. You’re drinking coconut water.”

            Again, the eyebrow. “And I’m supposed to eat all this.”

            “You can starve, daydreamer. I wouldn’t mind.”

            It was out of spite that Mako ate. He alternated between the remaining two dumplings and the rice, which he found to neutralize the heat enough to make it palatable, then alternated between the slug and the cabbage. Everything but the slug sat comfortably in his stomach, once the burning had gone away, but its meat tasted of fish and seawater and artificial heat, and its rubbery, slimy texture made for difficult chewing. He struggled to finish it.

            In the end, Mako’s plate was clear, his bowl of rice empty, and his cup of coconut water drained and refilled three times, and for the first time since arriving on this strange island he felt content, even if his insides were on fire. It never occurred to him while he had been stuffing himself that training might follow, but when he looked up to see Bingwei’s sadistic stare, his heart sank.

            “Don’t tell me you’re going to make me run,” Mako said. “Or squat, or whatever else.”

            “No,” Bingwei said. “Not today. Today is your induction. Tomorrow we will train.”

            “What does that even mean? Induction?”

            Bingwei reclined in his chair, his hands folded on the table. “You’re a part of the chain of command now. You’ll be responsible for the well-being of your squad and the success of the missions you are tasked with, here and abroad. It’s an enormous responsibility and a great honor. It also comes with many benefits.”

            “Oh?” Mako said sardonically. “Benefits like what?”

            “Food and drink, for a start. You’ll have as much as you’d like and at your leisure. In the evenings you’ll have your choice of girls and the time to use them. You’ll have the command and respect of your squad. You’ll have the honor of serving His Excellence and rebuilding your nation.”

            Mako reclined in his chair, a mirror of Bingwei, and narrowed his eyes. It wasn’t the idea of rewards that interested him, but what the rewards were and how they were presented. Just yesterday the order had seemed a militaristic slave ring with no personal autonomy or identity at all. There had been no control, at least not that he had. Now it seemed that he would have more control than he ever imagined.

            But this struck him as odd. Then it struck him as wickedly brilliant. There could be no better way to control a large population than by denying them of their very base needs, by withholding food and water and rest, and even companionship. He had fallen victim to it himself, could remember a time only days ago when he would have done anything that Bingwei had ordered just for a bowl of rice or a few minutes of sleep, though he would never show it. Such treatment would serve two purposes: It would bend the populace to a single command, and it would cull the flock. Anyone who couldn’t survive on meager rations and little sleep did not belong.

            Mako wondered what happened to those people, but shook the thought away. It would do no good to imagine.

            But those who _could_ survive, those who could _thrive_ under such conditions, were rewarded with particularly meager advantages. The way Bingwei had explained it, he would merely have the autonomy to take care of himself in the way he needed to. He would have his base needs met, his basic human rights returned. And to most, Mako imagined, that restoration would look like heaven, particularly with the addition of _girls and the time to use them_.

            “So,” Mako feigned curiosity, “you said girls?”

            It was the first time that Mako had seen Bingwei smile genuinely, and it was a coy and devilish smile that set Mako’s very full stomach to lurching. “I did. What of it?”

            “How does that work, exactly?”

            The smile faded, and Bingwei glared at Mako with very narrow, very skeptical eyes. “You mean to tell me you’ve never been with a girl? At your age?”

            Mako flushed, slightly embarrassed but more afraid of how this fact—it was a fact—would impact his standing in the order. Was it expected? Was this supposed to be public knowledge here? It wouldn’t serve him well to be viewed as inferior, not so soon.  “You know that’s not what I meant,” he lied. “I was talking about the protocol. The only girls I’ve seen since I got here were either in the line from the boat or the ones who just brought us our food.”

            Once again, the devilish smile stretched on Bingwei’s face. “You’ll find out about that later on, daydreamer.” Then he stood quite suddenly and rapped his knuckles on the table. “Lunch has concluded,” he said sternly. “We’ll tour the officer’s compound and acclimate you to your new position. It won’t do to have you running about like a _lost_ idiot.”

            Mako did not miss the inflection.

            “At five o’clock we’re to reconvene in the meeting hall for a final assembly and the swearing in, and then we’ll commence with dinner in the dormitory.”

            Bingwei had begun walking toward the door as he spoke, and Mako followed him closely. He dared not walk in stride, nor side-by-side. He wasn’t this man’s equal.

            Not yet, anyway.

            “What happens after dinner?” Mako asked as they exited the mess hall.

            “You really are dense, aren’t you? It’s a shame none of the other recruits in your squad were worth the trouble of promotion.”

            This admission made Mako forget all about what might come after dinner. “Not even Yaozhu?”

            “Too young. Too unreliable,” Bingwei explained. “Combustion benders on the whole don’t understand the way the world works. Small tribes of savages on remote islands, they are, no real contact with society. Maybe a radio, if they’re particularly advanced.”

            “But he did everything you asked of him,” Mako said. “Without complaint. Even I didn’t do that.”

            Bingwei stopped so abruptly that Mako nearly ran into him, and he rounded with a look of disbelief. “Are you suggesting we made the wrong choice? You’d have us pitch you back among the slaves and lift a _combustion bender_ to officer? Where’s your pride, daydreamer?”

            Mako bristled. “My name is _Mako_ ,” he said defiantly. “And I’m not a slave.”

            Bingwei rocked back on his heels casually and shoved his hands in the pockets of his jacket. His eyebrows had raised in the same appraising look that he had always given to Yaozhu, and Mako could almost see the corners of his mouth turn up. “Well said, Mako. Now, come along.”

            It did not take long for Mako to catch on to the game. Yes, Bingwei was still his superior, but he was no longer so superior that he could treat Mako as dirt, and it seemed to be Mako’s duty to make sure that Bingwei knew it. A little insubordination, a little back-talk, a sarcastic jibe on occasion, would go a long way toward establishing—or repairing—their relationship. Bingwei was no longer his _captain_ ; Bingwei was now his _mentor_.

            Mako walked alongside Bingwei for the remainder of their long tour, keeping stride through barracks and halls and all the other buildings that comprised the officer’s compound until at last they came to a long two-story building made of dark red brick.

            “This is our dormitory,” Bingwei said as they stood outside, and his voice had taken a quiet, deadly tone. “It is where all commanding officers are housed from guards to captains to His Excellency, when he visits. You would do well to keep quiet while you’re here. Follow.”

            Mako followed.

            The building itself stood in excellent condition as compared to the remainder of the compound: Everything from the rugs on the floor to the pictures on the wall was Fire Nation red with glimmering gold accents. Lighting the corridors were large wall-mounted fires that cast a warm glow over everything and set eerie shadows to flickering.

            Bingwei led Mako up a flight of dark mahogany stairs, across a wide and spacious landing furnished with plush red armchairs and chaise lounges, and into a wide corridor. Down they went, to the sixth door on the left, a stained wooden panel with a wide arched window in the top. Bingwei stopped with his hand on the knob.

            “This is our quarters.”

            The apartment easily rivaled his Republic City flat in size, and certainly bested it in decoration. Wide open, sunlight poured in through enormous glass-paneled windows that opened onto a balcony overlooking the yard, and the same armchairs and lounges that had occupied the commons were also present here.

            Mako didn’t have time to stare, though he certainly wanted to. Bingwei led him purposefully through the beautiful sitting room to its other side, where an open doorway let into what must have been their bedroom. A second vast space, it housed two matching beds and two chests of drawers, a table for each and a single small ladder-back chair. On one of the beds was situated two pristine uniforms with boots on top, and one set of nightclothes.

            On the whole, the place seemed extremely comfortable, except for its utter lack of bathroom and kitchen.

            “No privacy,” Bingwei said plainly, gesturing about the room. “Everything you do, I see. Everything I do, you see. There aren’t secrets here. You had best get used to it, and I’d better not hear any whining. If you don’t like it, you go to the common areas. There’s a public shower at the end of the hallway, the lounge we passed on the way here, and the kitchens downstairs.” 

            “And I’m free to go wherever I want?”

            “You’re free to go to the showers, the lounge, and the kitchens. And that’s on your own time. Now, you’ve got an hour until we’re set to swear you in. You’d best change into your new clothes and be ready to go when I get back.”

            Bingwei began to walk toward the bedroom door, and Mako watched him go.

            “Where are you going?” Mako asked as Bingwei rounded the corner.

            “I’ve got arrangements to make.”

            And before he knew it the door to the apartment clicked shut, and Mako was alone.

            His first instinct was to explore, to leave the apartment and see as much of this building as he possibly could as fast as he could before Bingwei returned. But as he stood staring at the brand-new uniform on _his_ well-made, heavily cushioned bed, he considered otherwise. This development meant luxury. For the first time since he’d waked from the blast in Ba Sing Se, he would be comfortable. Besides, he rationalized, with only an hour before he was to head out again there would be no way to investigate the building properly, particularly when he had no idea how large it was and how many rooms he would be able to access. Bingwei had been particularly terse when Mako had asked about access, and told him that he was only to visit the showers, the lounge, and the kitchen. To be caught out of bounds at this point would jeopardize the whole mission.

            But what was the mission? What was he actually _doing_ here? What was he hoping to achieve?

            A strange feeling overcame Mako then, a feeling of dread and hopelessness and overwhelming confusion. Certainly, he had been playing along with Bingwei today with every intention of informing Beifong about this place, about the Society, and how they could stop it. Eventually. For now, he had been acting on the side of the lawful and just. But beyond his sudden intention the most powerful motivator he had felt was self-preservation. Of course, he could rationalize his actions and say that he’d meant for all of this to happen, but when it came down to it he never knew what was going on, never knew what horrible situation he’d landed in, and had acted only out of desperation. It was only by pure luck that he’d ended up here in this room, faced with a promotion that he could never have anticipated. This had been a blind stumble, not a carefully coordinated plan to infiltrate the chain of command, and even the blind stumble had been incomprehensibly lucky.

            What had he done? Had he played his part so well that he’d been promoted without ever intending to be? He must have fooled his squadmates and superiors into believing that he was the most suited to lead them in the field despite his own belief that he was the least qualified to do so. But had he _actually_ fooled them? Hadn’t he been acting genuinely? Was he fitting in with these horrible people without ever meaning to?

            Mako found his body moving of its own volition. He changed obediently into the new uniform, admired briefly the dual chevrons on his shoulders, and folded his old uniform. All of this he put into the chest of drawers nearest his bed. And then he exited the bedroom.

            With a sigh he slumped sideways onto one of the armchairs in the sitting room and stared out the enormous windows. In the yard below, a squad was training.

            These people weren’t horrible, he thought. These people were just like him: even Bingwei. Everyone he had met on this terrible journey had been acting the same as he had been, out of the need to survive and thrive. And none of them had done anything truly evil, not when he considered their motives. Everyone must have been just as desperate as he had been, and how could he fault them for acting on that? How could he fault them for working to make their situation better? If he had known at the outset that obeying commands would earn him a comfortable bed in a luxurious apartment and as many hot meals a day as he could want, he most certainly would never have acted out those first days of training. He would have been a model citizen.

            Mako rubbed at his face, let his head hang over the armrest, and kept his eyes closed for a long time. All these conflicting thoughts had given him an awful feeling in the pit of his stomach, almost as if the sea slug had come back to life inside him. He was going to be a captain, but he was a Republic City detective. He was going to take care of the men in his squad to the best of his ability, but by doing so would be providing an enormous benefit to the society he considered his enemy. He was about to pledge his allegiance to the Democratic Society of Firebenders, but all he wanted to do was go home.

            What was he doing?

            “Time to go, kid.”

            Mako had not been expecting Bingwei to return so soon. But how long had he been laying here? The time seemed to have passed in the blink of an eye.

            With a deep breath, Mako forced himself to stand, forced himself to maintain a straight face. No matter what, he thought as he followed Bingwei out of the dormitory, he would act in the name of what he thought was right. He would gain as much information as he could as fast as he could, and he would report it to the Chief as soon as he was able. And once he was back home…

            How was he going to get back home?

            “You look sick,” Bingwei said curtly. “Couldn’t handle the slug?”

            Startled, Mako looked up to him and nodded. “A little exotic for me,” he lied dryly.

            Bingwei laughed and slapped Mako hard on the back. “You and I might get along after all.”

            If anything, that made Mako feel worse. Now the man whom he had hated above all others was treating him kindly.

            For the next hour and a half Mako went through the motions, his brilliant plan to infiltrate the society all but forgotten among the tug-of-war in his brain. It felt as if his mind had disconnected from his body. He didn’t remember the vows as he recited them alongside twelve other men, barely registered the shining rose-gold pin that Bingwei attached to the right breast of his uniform, and responded to the congratulations and general applause as a man of stature was expected to.

            Then he was back in the dormitory’s kitchen, seated on the bench of an enormous trestle table between Bingwei and an older man whose name he couldn’t remember if he tried, eating komodo chicken and fried crab and the same spicy dumplings he’d choked down at lunch. It didn’t seem to burn as much now, and he cleared two plates without a second thought.

            It was only when Bingwei slapped his back again that Mako jolted back to reality. The plates had been cleared away, his cup of lychee tea had disappeared and been replaced by some new liquid in a clear glass. Only a couple dozen men remained in the room, the same men with whom he had taken his vows, and each of them sat at perfect attention. Each of them had a glass of his own.

            “Rise for His Excellency, Guan the Liberator!”

            Mako rose.

            He recognized Guan at once. The blob of colors he’d seen upon waking had developed distinctive features and a commanding presence, all dressed in maroon with shining gold pins adorning his breast. Alongside him were a crowd of men who walked with eerily straight postures and saluted when they stopped. 

            Toru. She was there, standing at the end of the line and looking utterly defeated.

            “So,” Bingwei whispered smugly, “you remember what I said about the girls?”

            Mako nodded just slightly, but Bingwei said no more. Guan had begun to speak.

            “Congratulations to all of you, new captains and commanders. On this day you have proven yourself to be valuable members of our society, who stand up for what is right in the world and are devoted to the preservation and elevation of firebenders everywhere! Tonight, we celebrate. Tomorrow, we train!”

            Every man in the room grabbed their glass and drank as one, and when Mako did not, Bingwei elbowed him hard in the side.

            Mako drank. He wanted to retch on the spot.

            “Ever had cactus juice before?”

            Mako shook his head.

            “Hang on tight, then, kid. You’re in for a ride.”

            That was the last thing he remembered.


	12. Collapse

            Frantically, Bolin threw clothes into the almost wholly empty bag the air acolytes had towed to his apartment. He didn't know where he would go—perhaps to Ba Sing Se as he had originally planned, to search for Mako's killers—but he had to leave the city before he lost his mind completely. Each time he thought back on his argument with Lin his stomach twisted in disgust. How could he have lost control? He just got his bending back. Why had the lava come so easily?

            "Bolin, what are you doing?"

            He ignored the voice. He had expected this. Lin and Su would have contacted everyone, and no doubt they would send someone to check the apartment. He continued packing, his mind a blur.

            "Where are you going to go?"

            He threw the last shirt from the pile into his bag and stormed into the bedroom to retrieve a new stack. Opal still stood in the entryway when he returned to the sitting room. He had hoped she would disappear. He didn't look at her, couldn't bring himself to look at her.

            "Bolin!"

            He sat with his back to the door and continued stuffing clothes into his bag.

            Next he knew, Opal was seated beside him, her legs crossed and hands folded in her lap. She stared at him. Her forehead wrinkled with intense worry, but she said nothing for a long time. All she did was watch.

            "What do you plan to do once you've repacked all your things?"

            Bolin shook his head desperately.

            "You know, you hurt my mother when you shoved her. You nearly melted Aunt Lin's office..." Opal looked around. "And Pabu's just...Cowering over there."

            Shamed, Bolin closed his eyes and looked away, his face tensed, jaw clenched. He shook his head again. Even Pabu wouldn't come near him now. "I’m sorry..."

            "Were you just going to leave me here? Were you going to say anything before you left? What if I'd gotten here an hour later? What would I have found?"

            He dropped his forehead onto his hand and shook his head a third time. Opal sounded angry. He couldn't bear for her to be angry with him now, too. "I don't know!"

            "Put your clothes down, you're not going anywhere," Opal said sternly. She stood and exited to the bathroom, returning moments later with a damp towel. Again, she sat beside him and stared. "I said to put the clothes down. You need to listen to me."

            Bolin raised his head but kept his eyes locked on the ground. "I don't know what's happening to me," he said.

            Opal dabbed at his face with the cool towel and sighed, "You're a mess." She examined the sweat and tears and dirt she'd wiped away. “That’s all.”

            "I think I'm losing my mind," Bolin whispered, and he dropped his head into his hands once more. "I think I'm going crazy."

            Opal dabbed at the back of his neck and shook her head. "No. You're not. Come on, let's get you a bath..."

            Opal stood and pulled Bolin to his feet. He came only reluctantly, occasionally stumbling over himself. She sat him on the edge of the bath and turned on the water. “You take a little while to cool off,” she instructed. “Relax and clean yourself up. You’ll feel better, I promise. I have to go call my mom and let her know we’re okay.”

            “Are we okay?”

            With a benevolent smile, Opal stood. “I can’t pretend that I know what’s going on in your head right now, but no matter what happens, I’ll stick by you.”

            Bolin nodded, and Opal left. He sat for a long time, the water rushing behind him, until the basin was full and he could no longer ignore the aching in his body. He couldn’t remember the point at which everything began hurting, but it was enough to lure him in. He lay, head back with the heels of his hands pressing into his eyes, and wondered exactly what had happened over the last hours. He’d been angry before he ever went to see Lin. He’d been stewing about the summit all week, and the stress had finally come to a head. He’d lost control of his bending in such a way as he had never done before, not even as a child. He hadn’t intended to bend the rock in her office, much less liquefy it. Melting the earth had always taken intense concentration, and more besides to manipulate it. But now he had done it without even thinking.

            He had scared himself.

            By the time Bolin had calmed enough to dry and dress the water had gone cold. When he mustered up the nerve to exit the bathroom he found Opal seated on the sofa, telephone receiver in hand with a frustrated expression wrinkling her face. Pabu had nestled on her lap and she absently stroked his head.

            "No, mom," Opal said, exasperated. "Everything is okay. He's in the bath; you don't need to send anyone... No, don't send Korra. No, we don't need to go to Air Temple Island. He needs space. A _lot_ of space. No, mom," she repeated, more forcefully this time. "I promise everything is fine... I didn’t say anything about it. No, I'm _not_ lying,” she paused and glanced at Bolin, eyebrow raised, and resumed her call. “I'm not going to leave him by himself. We're safe at the apartment, it's quiet here. I plan to stay overnight and keep an eye on things. I can handle it, and even if things do get crazy I know you and Aunt Lin are only a phone call away. I know, I know. Love you, too." She placed the receiver on its base and regarded Bolin curiously, but she didn’t say a word.

            "I need to explain," Bolin said after a while in a voice that was so small he scarcely believed it was his own. He hadn’t moved from the doorway. He felt nervous just looking at her. He crossed his arms and fidgeted, leaned against the jamb.

            "You don't need to explain," Opal replied. "You need to go to bed. Aunt Lin wants you at work tomorrow."

            This confused him. Given their most recent interaction, Bolin figured that Lin would want him well away from her and well away from the project. "She does?"

            "She does. I talked to her before I called my mom. She told me," Opal paused and knitted her brow, assuming a severe expression, and lowered her voice in her best impression of Lin, "If his bending is that strong I want him front and center first thing tomorrow morning. Let him take it out on a building that _isn't_ occupied." Opal paused and smiled, as if waiting for a reaction. When the silence grew awkward she continued, "I'm guessing you didn't eat dinner."

            "No. I'm not hungry."

            "All right then," she gave Pabu a gentle pat on the rump, and the fire ferret skittered away. Then she stood and started toward the kitchen, her gait full of purpose. "You go get in bed, I'll get you some food so you can relax and go to sleep."

            "I just said I'm not hungry," Bolin protested. "And I'm not tired. It's not even dark yet."

            "No argument. You're going to eat and you're going to rest. Now go on." Opal disappeared into the kitchen, and her tone had left no room for Bolin to dispute.

            With a distinct slump in his shoulders Bolin retired to his bed, still unmade from the morning, and stared at the wall. He felt keenly aware of Mako's absence now, of the quietness of the apartment, and when he thought of his high spirits only a couple of days ago he wondered if it had been fake. Had he been pretending? Had he been wrong?

            It was not long before Opal came back bearing a cup of instant noodles. She wore a frown, but presented him with the food all the same. "Your kitchen was empty," she said, as though it should explain everything.

            Again, Bolin felt ashamed, and again he wanted to explain himself. "Opal, listen. I—"

            "Nope. Eat your food and go to sleep," said Opal firmly. "Whatever it is you're trying to tell me can wait until you've rested."

            "I just wanted you to know—"

            "I already know, otherwise I wouldn't be here. Now, please, please try to rest."

            It sounded like she was begging, and in the face of that Bolin could not argue.

            "I'll come check on you in a while," Opal said, her voice more tender now than it had been before. "But I need to go make another few phone calls."

            She kissed him on the forehead. Then she was gone.

            For a while, Bolin tentatively picked at the noodles until his stomach lurched. He couldn't be certain if the lurch was hunger or guilt, so he ate a few bites, picked at the noodles until his stomach lurched again, and then ate a few more. Satisfied enough, he placed his still-heaping cup on the bedside table and lay back against his pillow. In the quiet he could hear Opal's voice from the sitting room carrying the same firm but wholly gentle tone that she had used with him. It was an altogether comforting tone now that it wasn't turned on him, and as he closed his eyes it lulled him toward sleep.

            He stood in a Ba Sing Se that wasn't Ba Sing Se, in an upper ring that wasn't the upper ring. People that weren't people rushed around frantically, terrified, screaming, tending to wounded and covering the dead. It must have been the explosion, he thought. It must have just happened. But nothing had been destroyed. No debris littered the ground. He could not tell what they were running from or what had caused such harm to the people.

            Suddenly the ground went out from underneath him, its solidity vanished in a flash of heat and light and the smell of sulfur and brimstone, and when he opened his eyes against it he gasped. All around him the ground had begun to boil, to redden with heat and melt away in a great sea of lava that radiated to a distant horizon. The bodies that had been on the ground began sinking into it, lazily disappearing below the bubbling surface. And the people who had been running, the ones who had been fleeing—

            Screams. Flailing arms, frantic cries. Pain. Feet first they were being engulfed by the rising tide. They were reaching out to him, pleading with him to pull them out. Horrified, he drew his hands to bend the lava away, to cool it, to subdue it, but the earth would not respond. Flames licked at their clothes, at their faces, at their hair. The stink of burned flesh made him dizzy. The bubbling of their skin made him nauseous. One by one the people that weren't people melted into the same lump of bloodied, blistered meat that he'd seen at the precinct. One by one, they turned into...

            Bolin woke to the sound of his own tremulous breathing. His body felt numb, his limbs weighted down with lingering terror. It took a long time for him to inventory himself, to convince himself that he was, in fact, still lying on his bed in the same position in which he'd fallen asleep. He was still safe in his apartment. Everything he had seen had been a sick nightmare.

            With great effort, Bolin willed himself to move. First he flexed his hands, then lifted his arms, and eventually managed to sit upright. He rubbed at his face with cold, clammy hands and looked about the room. Pabu had nestled on the bed at his feet at some point, and presently raised his head to give Bolin a sleepy look. Mako's bed remained unoccupied and pristine, just as it had been the day he'd gone off to Ba Sing Se. Opal was nowhere to be found.

            Pabu whimpered.

            "It's okay, buddy," Bolin whispered. "It was just a dream."

            But he remembered the way they looked. He remembered the way they smelled. The way they screamed. A wave of nausea rolled over him.

            He got to his feet slowly, his whole body quaking. With one hand on his forehead and the other on his gut he made his way to the door. Some water and fresh air would help. The radio, maybe. He stopped with his hand trembling on the doorknob. Was Opal talking? He pressed his ear to the door.

            "...doing it two days from now. We got Tenzin's approval but there was already a tour group going out there tomorrow." It was Korra's voice, speaking in hushed and secretive tones. But when had she gotten here? And what was she talking about?

            "What can I do?" asked Opal in the same small voice that Korra had used.

            "Keep him occupied," Korra replied. "He'll go to work tomorrow and the day after, but you'll need to keep him away from the precinct in the evening. I don't think he had any plans to come to Air Temple Island either, so it shouldn't be too much trouble." She paused, and when she spoke next her tone had shifted. She sounded troubled. She sounded concerned. "Has _he_ been any trouble?"

            "No," Opal said. "But I'd be lying if I said I wasn't scared when I got here."

            "I was scared when Su told me you had come over. The way he's been lately I worried he might do something…I don’t know, like hit you or bend at you or... You know what I mean."

            Bolin grimaced and let his hand fall away from the doorknob, let his body slack enough that his forehead connected with the door with the tiniest thump. He stood that way for a while, listening as Korra and Opal discussed him and his recent behavior in less than flattering words, then he slunk back to the bed and collapsed atop it.

            He drifted fitfully in and out of sleep marked by afterimages of his nightmare and thoughts of Opal and Korra's disappointment in him. Once he woke to the sound of the door opening, of Opal's quiet footsteps approaching the bed. She drew the covers over him and touched his face gently, unaware that he was not sleeping. Then she left. He woke again some unknown time later and thought he could hear the faintest sound of crying through the bedroom door. The next time the sun had begun peeking over the horizon, casting a dull orange glow through the window. He watched the light creep across the wall for what felt like hours, until at last he resigned himself to a day of exhaustion and got up.

            Opal was sleeping soundly on the sofa. He was due at work in half an hour. He dressed in silence, covered her with the blanket from his own bed, and left without saying good-bye.

            He arrived on site twelve minutes late, and though he knew that Wing and Wei would never say anything to him about the matter Bolin could tell that they were upset. Whether it was because he was late or because of what he had done to Suyin or some suspicion about Opal he didn't know. Still, he soldiered on beside them for an hour until the quiet became too much, then he excused himself to go work somewhere else, somewhere by himself.

            Things went slowly, and what work Bolin accomplished was sloppy. Certainly, he could bend the discs of earth he had been provided, could spin them and toss them around as well as any other day, but lavabending came only with difficulty. He could excite the rock, could liquefy it at least partially, but its heat could not compare with days prior and it did not cut as cleanly as he needed it to. He felt too tired. His heart just wasn't in it. Every time he bent the earth he thought about the nightmare.

            As lunchtime neared, Bolin took his break and sat atop the ruins of his building, now an open slab of concrete floor with half a wall and lingering metal supports, and he watched as the other earthbenders on duty exited their sites and strolled off to eat. From ten stories up he saw Wing and Wei practically bolt out the door of the building adjacent, their energy as high as ever. Even if he had been hungry, he wouldn’t have joined them. With the same trepidation he'd felt the whole night prior Bolin backed himself against a girder and closed his eyes, counting the seconds as they passed.

            The last number he remembered counting was one hundred and two. He'd dozed and woke again, though he couldn't tell how long he'd been asleep. Not long, judging by the quiet. If workers had come back there would be sounds of thumping and grinding and warping metal. The only sound he could hear was the general noise of the city carrying on the wind.

            And then a strange, eerily familiar _pop_.

            Confused, Bolin looked up and across the way. He could see a figure standing atop the nearest building, staring at him. The air between had distorted slightly, like a shimmering bolt racing through clear space.

            Combustion.

            Without thought, Bolin dove forward and the bolt connected with the girder. Dust flew from the impact, and the explosion bloomed with a deafening boom that sent him sprawling. Dazed, he scrambled to his feet as another bolt connected. He sprinted flat out across the open floor and hid behind what remained of the wall. There was not enough cover, he thought as he looked around. There wasn't enough earth to both protect him _and_ fight back. All that remained of the building now was metal that he couldn’t bend and a few piles of crumbling bricks that once had served as walls. Yes, there was the floor beneath his feet, but to displace any part of that would certainly cause a collapse.

            Another combustion bolt connected with the wall, blowing it to dust and leaving Bolin dangerously exposed. He scrambled away. There was no time to contemplate. There was no time to wonder who this combustion bender was or why he was attacking. There was only time to fight back.

            He swept his right foot behind, kicking a single brick into the air behind his left shoulder. He caught it with all his might and hurled it across the way with a lumbering hook. Without stopping to see if he had connected, Bolin repeated the move again, then a third time, left and right, barraging the enemy with as many projectiles as he could find. There were not many, and none of them hit the mark.

            Two more explosions shook the floor and supports around him, and the building emitted a low, thunderous creak. In panic Bolin rushed back toward what little of the wall remained. He planted his feet, summoned all his strength, and heaved the five-foot block of brick free of its mortar. He shifted his weight back, preparing a mighty kick to launch it away, but before he could follow through there came another pop, and the blow struck solidly. The brick disintegrated beneath the enormous blast, and next Bolin knew he was on the ground, skidding away toward the open edge of the platform.

            He whirled to his feet, kicking two loose bricks away as he went, and searched for more ammunition. Another blast rocked the concrete immediately to his left so Bolin darted to the right, toward his abandoned pack and the discs of shaped earth that it contained. With a dive turned shoulder roll he dodged another blast and grabbed the pack, wrenching the serrated disc from within it. Breathless and exhausted, he turned the disc between his outstretched palms. Its edges began to glow softly.

            Another burst of combustion echoed out from beyond.

            Bolin let fly the disc as he dove out of the line of fire, and he watched it shoot uselessly past his mark. As he rolled to his feet he reached out to pull the stone back, but it was too far gone. An explosion burst in the air before him and again Bolin was on his back, the wind blown from his lungs. There came an earsplitting _crack_ from below. The floor pitched and rolled. As he lay staring into the open sky there came a moment of intense silence, of extraordinary calm, and in those seconds Bolin knew that collapse was imminent. The structure had been weakened long before the fighting ever began. He’d been dismantling it all day. There had been too many blasts. There wasn't enough support.

            With a cry of desperation and a jolt of adrenaline he kicked up to his feet, ripping a wide expanse of the concrete floor into the air. He dove into a walkover to build momentum and launched the slab across the way two-handed and with reckless ferocity. He landed clumsily and stumbled to his hands and knees, a searing pain shooting through his leg. He hadn't heard the popping of combustion, hadn't seen the shimmering of the air.

            The floor buckled beneath the blast, and Bolin fell.

 

*****

 

            It had been too long since Korra had spent time in meditation, but now that she was sitting in the twilight air with the soft rush of the Republic City Bay in the background, she realized how much she had missed it. Too much time had passed since the last time she felt able to focus on herself. But now things had calmed down, at least for the moment, and she felt free to let her mind wander.

            The meditation was not particularly relaxing. As her mind roamed, Korra recalled the funeral and its aftermath, Bolin’s bending block breaking free in a monstrous display of lavabending, the Earth Nation Summit. Everything had seemed so dire of late, but Wu’s waking had brought new hope. They would exhume the platinum box tomorrow. They would examine the body inside and determine once and for all whether it was Mako or not. In the best case they would realize their mistake, they could tell Bolin that his brother was alive somewhere even if he had been captured or kidnapped. In the worst case, they would confirm what they had believed all along and begin the process of healing. Either way would bring much-needed closure.

            In her heightened state of awareness, Korra knew that someone was approaching and she listened carefully to the footfalls. They stopped some distance away and she waited for words.

            “Korra?”

            It was Tenzin. His voice had been small but sharp with the slightest hint of distress. He approached again, his stride slower than before.

            “Korra?”

            Korra drew herself out of the meditation, slowly easing back into reality. She closed her eyes and sucked in a deep and calming breath, exhaled slowly and with control. By the time Tenzin had come round to her front she had awakened completely, and she gazed up at him from her seat on the ground with confusion. He looked the way he had sounded, all wrinkle-browed and stern-faced. Even his posture hinted at urgency.

            “You need to come with me,” he said at once, and he extended a hand to help her to her feet.

            Korra accepted graciously. “What’s the matter?”

            Tenzin faltered, as though groping for words that he did not know. He stammered and then he paused, dropped his eyes to the ground, and heaved an enormous sigh. Then he met Korra’s gaze squarely and said, “We’re going to the hospital. There’s been an accident.”

            Silence lingered between the two for only a moment before Tenzin marched purposefully away toward the bison stables. Korra followed, stunned into silence. It was not the first time she’d been summoned to the scene of some public mishap to perform cleanup or offer statements. It was not even the first time Tenzin had told her there had been a problem. No, it hadn’t been the words that had startled her; it had been his tone, the look on his face, the slightest slump in his posture.

            “Lin has asked us to come,” Tenzin said as he airlifted himself onto his customary position around Oogi’s head, and Korra followed into the passenger basket. “We can phone the Future Industries office later and let Asami know what’s happened.”

            “What’s going on?” Korra asked, finding her words at last.

            Tenzin coaxed Oogi off the ground with a _yip yip_ before beginning his explanation, and when he spoke he did so slowly, with discretion and care for the way he chose his words. “I told you, Lin called just after dinner. She informed me that a building collapsed downtown today around noon when most of the workers were away. No one came back for a time, so no one knew that it happened. No onlookers suspected anything was wrong, as buildings have been coming down all week. ”Tenzin paused, and Korra could see his shoulders rise and fall as he sighed. “The twins called her to the scene as soon as they returned from their lunch. They might’ve been gone an hour, perhaps more.”

            Korra’s stomach dropped out. Her blood ran cold. “What are you saying?”

            Tenzin sighed deeply. “Bolin was caught in the collapse. Lin said that he was hurt badly.” By this time, Oogi had touched down on the empty road outside of the Republic City Hospital, and Tenzin dismounted. Once Korra had hopped down herself, he dismissed the bison and watched it fly off. Then, he turned to her once more. “When I talked to Lin earlier, he was still alive.”

 _Still alive_? The words made it sound as though Bolin was barely hanging on, as if there was a chance that he might…

            Korra shook the thought from her head and kept pace with Tenzin through the front doors, around long winding hallways, up several flights of stairs, until at last they entered a mostly-deserted, wide corridor, dimly lit and eerily quiet. Down the way, Korra could see a handful of people gathered outside a door, and as they approached she could hear them. Opal was there, crying, and Suyin was holding her, cooing gently. Wing and Wei sat beside each other, their backs to the wall and their eyes on their shoes.

            Su seemed to notice Korra before anyone else, and she turned with an outstretched arm to welcome Korra into her and Opal’s comforting embrace. She whispered, “It’s going to be okay,” several times before Korra pulled away from her and looked between the gathering.

            “What’s his status?” Tenzin asked officially. “Any change?”

            Su shook her head, indicating the negative. “Lin went back to the precinct an hour ago to gather more information. She should be back soon. In the meantime, I managed to get in for a few minutes but they herded me out again pretty quickly.”

            “And?” Tenzin prompted.

            “He’s still unconscious. They had healers in to start on what they could, but,” Su looked to the ground with a sigh, “we don’t know anything yet, and we won’t until he wakes up and explains to us exactly what happened.”

            “ _If_ he wakes up,” uttered Wei from the ground.

            Opal wailed.

            Korra slumped against the wall with her hands cupped around her nose and mouth. It felt suddenly quite hard to breathe, as though all the air had been sucked from the room.

            “We’re going to stay out here until he’s stabilized,” Su instructed. “The healers told us that they’ll let us know when it’s all right to go in. They’ve been coming and going all afternoon. They’ve been very kind.”

            Korra could not imagine how difficult Su’s position must be, standing vigil outside a door through which she could not go, comforting her children. Wing and Wei must’ve been here for hours, must have helped to dig him out. Likely they had been the first to arrive at the scene.  There was no doubt in her mind that they would have contacted Opal immediately upon arriving here. It was well after sunset by now. If the collapse had happened around noon—how many hours had Bolin been out? How many hours had they all been here, just waiting?

            Korra sunk listlessly down until she was seated beside Wing. She assumed much the same posture, fidgeting with her hands and staring at her boots. It was going to be a long night.

 

*****

 

            For as long as he could remember Bolin had been running, scrambling, rushing with all haste through the great lava ocean. It rolled on forever, dotted here and there with tiny islands of earth over which he picked his stumbling path. He sprinted past blistered bodies and rubble buildings lost in the vast expanse, past Mako’s disfigured corpse and the ruins of a Ba Sing Se that wasn’t Ba Sing Se. Explosions burst at his heels with such constancy and accuracy that all he could hear was one continuous crash, like the rolling of thunder without rain. Sometimes they bloomed so close that he could feel the wind rushing off them, could feel the heat washing over him.

            He did not know from where the explosions were coming, could not tell who or what had produced them, and he did not care. All he could do was run and dodge and hope that they would stop soon. He had been so tired. All he could remember was exhaustion. Running and exhaustion. He wanted to sleep.

And then there was an end. A single island of glassy obsidian rock protruded from the depths, and beyond it was no more. Nowhere else to run. Bolin stood upon the stone, staring into the black beyond before whirling about to face the onslaught. A thousand and more figures glided eerily along the surface of the lava ocean, a thick cloud of dust and debris floating about them like fog. They were figures with no faces and no features but for the glowing red eyes upon their foreheads, single orbs of evil intent that gazed holes through him as magma bores through rock.

            They were combustion benders.

            They were trying to kill him.

            All at once a swell of energy coursed through him, cut through the fatigue like cold steel, and his arms drew upward of their own volition with strength he thought he'd lost. And as his arms raised higher and higher so, too did the tide of lava grow behind him. Its immense weight bore down on him as though he had bent the whole of the Earth. His aching muscles strained as he began to move, he felt them tearing under the stress, and he hurled the great wave forward. The lava crested, its shadow cast over the advancing figures, and the sweeping wall crashed violently to the ground. It enveloped him, seared him through his core, and drove the world to black. It crushed him from above, rendered his whole body immobile. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t see. He couldn’t bend. He couldn’t speak.

            But he could feel his body beginning to burn.

 

*****

 

            Bolin bolted upright in the dark, his chest heaving with labored breaths, his heart in his throat, his body numb with fear. It was the same as it had been in his apartment, the same as when he woke from the first nightmare. He stared ahead at the place where his feet should have been but his eyes wouldn’t focus. His head was spinning. Desperately he ground the heels of his hands into his eyes, rubbed the sweat from his forehead, and finally looked around again. His breathing wouldn’t slow, and the trembling in his hands wouldn’tstop. His eyes wouldn’t focus. Unfettered panic slowly gave way to crippling pain.

            He didn’t recognize this room or the bed upon which he sat, but he remembered what had happened before the fall, before the endless dream. There had been a combustion bender. He’d been on the roof. The whole place caved in. Bolin remembered falling backward, the metal and stone of the building following him down. The noise had been incredible.

            “You weren’t supposed to wake up,” said a voice from somewhere beyond the foot of the bed.

            Bolin stared wide-eyed into the dark, panicked and confused. His eyes ached and his head throbbed so fiercely that his vision blackened at its periphery. For a moment, he thought he was seeing things. There was a figure there, a huge and lumbering body obscured by the shadows. It was like the figures from his dreams, the featureless wraiths that had chased him. Terrified, he recoiled, his legs pumping clumsily to propel himself backward. But his body wouldn’t respond the way he wanted it to; he fell over himself on the bed and landed hard with his back against what must have been the headboard. A searing pain bolted through his shoulder. He could hear his heartbeat in his ears and feel it pounding in his chest, in his throat, behind his eyes.

            The figure stepped forward.

            “You’re stubborn. Talented, but stubborn. A shame you weren’t touched by fire.”

            The figure’s face screwed up in concentration, in the expression that Bolin recognized as the wind-up to combustion. It was as if time had stopped, and in a fraction of a second Bolin’s body froze and a thousand thoughts rolled through his exhausted, impaired mind. This was no dream. The pain he felt right now would be nothing compared to the pain of a direct hit. Opal would see him the same way he had seen Mako, all bloodied and blistered. He would be dead and gone. If fate was kind it would be over in an instant. If not, he would suffer.

            In another fraction of that same second, desperation welled up inside of him. He groped blindly about the bed for whatever implement he could find, his eyes locked on the man in shadow. He grasped cold metal and heaved it with all the power his body could muster, hurled it so forcefully that something somewhere in his pained arm popped grotesquely. The power of his throw bowled him over, bent him double on his knees on the bed, clutching at his shoulder and gritting his teeth against the agony.

            He waited for a blast that didn’t come.


	13. Dreams

            Korra had nearly dozed, had at some point slumped down even farther, her head resting gently on Wing’s shoulder. The hours had passed slowly since she arrived at the hospital, and as far as she knew there had been no change from Bolin’s room. Healers came and went, and each time one entered or exited the room Su or Opal or Tenzin would inquire about any changes. Eventually there came a time when the inquisition stopped, and all of them resigned themselves to waiting.

            Su and Opal had joined her on the floor but Tenzin remained upright and alert, pacing up and down the way impatiently. His footsteps were the only thing keeping Korra awake. His anxiety felt contagious.

            But then his footsteps stopped and Korra lifted her head sleepily. She rubbed at her eyes and followed Tenzin’s gaze down the corridor where she could see Lin rushing forward with an urgent expression. A white-capped healer followed her.

            “What took you so long?” Tenzin demanded, though his voice remained hushed. He shot a cursory glance at the healer as he entered Bolin’s room, then turned his attention to Lin again. “We’ve been waiting here for hours.”

            “I got caught up at headquarters,” Lin replied shortly. “The investigation hit a wall.”

            By this time, Su had gotten to her feet. “What’s the trouble?”

            “We’ve been combing through the remains of the building all day trying to figure out what caused it to fall. We found loose bricks a block away and one of Bolin’s discs ended up on the roof two buildings down. They started digging through the rubble at ground zero tonight, and we found evidence of an explosion, several of them, and even with lavabending there’s no way the kid could’ve…”

            A thunderous cry erupted from behind the closed door, a throaty and desperate roar that chilled Korra’s blood in her veins. Then the crash of broken glass. A heavy thud. By the time she had even thought to move Lin and Tenzin were through the door with Opal, Wing, and Wei on their heels. They stopped not more than a foot inside.

            The first thing that Korra noticed upon entering the room was the body: The healer who had entered the room moments before lay sprawled on his back on the ground, a sizeable gash ripped into his uncapped, tattooed forehead. He wasn’t moving. Beside him lay what once had been a metal desk lamp, or so she imagined, but it was dented and broken. This puzzled her, and for several long moments she looked between the two: The man, the lamp, the man, the lamp.

             “Get that combustion bender in some kind of restraint!” Lin commanded.

            Tenzin, Wing, and Wei set immediately to action, and for one last time Korra stared at the warped metal on the floor. Then she looked to the bed. At its foot, Bolin knelt on both knees, doubled over with his forehead pressed hard into the blanket, and he remained so quiet that she initially believed he had fainted. But then he moved just slightly, rocked forward and back, and clutched at his shoulder with a pitiful groan.

            “You metalbent,” Korra stammered at him. She couldn’t bring herself to move. The sound he had made was inhuman.

            “No, he didn’t,” Lin said, and she rushed forward with urgency in place of panic. “Su, with me. Opal, Korra, go get some help. I need as much security as this place has, right now. And healers!”

            Korra had scarcely remembered that Opal was even there. She was standing back behind the commotion with her fingers curled in front of her mouth and an expression of abject horror on her face. She had gone the slightest shade of green and looked fit to burst into tears.

            “Opal, go,” Korra said, and she gently prodded Opal from the room. “I’ll make sure things are okay in here.”

            “But…”

            “Go. You don’t need to see this.” Korra didn’t even know what this would be.

            Opal went.

            “Get on the other side!”

            Korra turned back around and watched Lin and Suyin moving about the bed. They stood opposite each other, Lin on Bolin’s right side and Suyin on his left, and while Su wore the same look of horror that Opal had, Lin appeared particularly cool-headed as she issued commands. Together they set to work unfolding Bolin from his tightly coiled ball. He resisted, grasping at his arm, writhing and moaning, but eventually they got him upright and kept him that way.

            “Hold him,” Lin ordered. She had wrenched the hand clutching his shoulder away. Then she grasped his injured arm by the elbow and wrist, two handed, and when she bent it he groaned sickly. Lin seemed unaffected by the noise. “You have to hold him steady and straight. Don’t you dare let go.”

            Still looking terrified, Su did as she was told. One knee on the bed, she cradled Bolin tightly and held fast to his good arm. She was squinting her eyes closed, her head turned away as if afraid to watch. Bolin squirmed weakly against her and Korra could just barely see him staring, perhaps deliriously, at Lin. And then his eyes went very wide with realization.

             “No, Lin,” he whimpered, his face white as driven snow. He tried to pull out of Suyin’s grasp but she held him firm, one arm around his chest and the other around his head. She put her hand over his eyes and drew him even closer to her. He continued to beg, a terrified quiver in his voice. “No, Lin. No, Lin! No! Lin! Lin!”

            With one last nod to Su, Lin propped one foot on the bed and heaved against Bolin’s arm. Korra cringed and looked away, but she could hear his anguished scream even as it was muffled by Suyin’s arms. And then his shoulder gave a sickening, fleshy pop.

            It took less than a second afterward for Bolin to faint, and Su stumbled under the unexpected weight. Had she not strained to keep steady, they would certainly have toppled to the floor. “Help me!” she cried.

            Together, Lin and Su situated Bolin back on the bed where he lay very, very still and very, very pale.

            Korra stood rooted to the spot, gaping and very slightly nauseous.

            Lin straightened and looked between Korra and Su with narrowed eyes. “He didn’t bend anything,” she explained flatly. “He threw his arm out. I’ve trained enough rookie metalbenders on the cables that I know a bum shoulder when I see one.” She patted the cables mounted on her hip idly, as if what she had just done was commonplace. “The quicker you set it back the less painful it is.”

            Suddenly, it seemed the chaos had ended. The room had gone deathly quiet, and for a time nobody moved and nobody spoke. It was as if they all needed a moment to register what had just happened. But then Korra watched Lin approach the combustion bender, completely unfazed, and restrain him formally. Wing, and Wei had done a passable job of immobilizing him in a pinch, bending whatever metal implements they could find around his body. They seemed to have covered his whole head with what must once have been a metal bedpan, and they and Tenzin had been standing guard over him, waiting and watching for movement.

            Lin, Su, and Tenzin began exchanging terse words, but Korra didn’t hear what they were saying. Instead, she approached the bed slowly, cautiously, afraid of what she would see. And then she was beside Bolin, gazing down. All the life had gone out of him. He was so still that for a moment she was convinced he wasn’t breathing.

            She had never seen him like this. She had never seen anyone like this. In her wildest dreams, she could never have imagined the truth of it. Two days ago he had been fine—angry and temperamental, true—but he maintained the same energy and strength of presence as he had since the day she met him in the pro-bending arena. Now he looked dead.

            Weak kneed, Korra couldn’t help but sit. She touched his arm delicately, as if to make certain he was still there at all. His skin was cold. The muscles felt loose and feeble. Just as tentatively, Korra put her hand flat on his chest and held it there, feeling the faintest heartbeat. She pressed the back of her hand to his cheek. It was clammy and slick with sweat.

            All at once, Korra realized that she had never touched him like this, and she became instantly aware of how intimate it had been. She gave a self-conscious look about the room and, satisfied that no one had seen her, folded her hands sheepishly in her lap, uncertain what else to do.

            Opal returned to the room within a few minutes, a veritable army of security personnel and a few additional healers behind her, and the room erupted into commotion again. Korra watched as Lin instructed a third of the guards to transport the combustion bender to lockup, and the guards removed him swiftly and quietly. The other two thirds dispersed to thoroughly sweep the building. Tenzin directed the healers toward the bed, and Su wrangled her exhausted children. Opal had stopped crying, the color had come back into her face, and she stared doe-eyed at Bolin. It looked as if she was ready to bolt toward him, but Su held her fast.

            One of the healers hooked his arm around Korra’s shoulders and escorted her from the bed toward the door. The remaining two rushed past with healing water in hand. She could see the faintest blue glow radiating from the spaces between them.

            “Everybody out,” said the healer who had helped Korra away. “We need—“

            “No!” Korra protested. She ripped her arm away from the healer and glared at him. She felt suddenly very angry. The reality of the situation had finally hit home. “I’m not going anywhere! My friend was attacked by a man who broke into your hospital under your noses. How does that even happen? I’m staying here. Someone has to make sure he’s safe, and it’s clearly not going to be you.”

            The healer started to argue, but quieted when Tenzin stepped forward. There was something about the airbending master that could, when needed, be supremely imposing. “I agree with Avatar Korra,” he said officially. “And having spoken to Chief Beifong, I think we all can agree that some additional security should be provided, at least until we know why and how this happened and can be sure there are no more threats here.”

            “No way it’s coincidence,” Lin grumbled from the doorway. “That combustion bender had an agenda. I’ll bet anything he’s the one that caused the building to collapse and that he came here to finish the job.”

            Tenzin looked back at Lin, incredulous, and then turned back to the healer. “I understand your concern, and I can agree that too many people can cause unnecessary stress,” he said, his tone more relaxed now, “but you must understand our concerns as well.”

            The healer, now somewhat pale-faced, nodded.

            “I’ll arrange for the White Lotus to provide surveillance around this place until such a time as Bolin is released. With the addition of Lin’s metalbenders there should be no issue, but making these arrangements will take time. I only ask that you allow Korra to remain, at least for the night, for extra protection.”

            “I don’t have the authority to do any of that,” said the healer. “But I can take you to the principal healer. He can allow it.”

            “Very well,” Tenzin said. “Take me to him and we’ll come to an agreement, I’m sure. Korra, I’ll send the sentries as soon as I’m able.”

            “Call Asami,” Korra said. “We never let her know what’s going on.”

            “I’ll call,” said Suyin. “You all have more important things to take care of.”

             “But, mom,” Opal was pleading now, tears rimming her eyes again. “I want to stay.”

            Suyin shook her head. “Not tonight, Opal. You need to rest.”

            “Don’t worry,” Korra said reassuringly. “You watched over him last night, and I’ll watch over him tonight.”

            It seemed that Opal could not argue. Su led her from the room, coaxing her with promises that they could return first thing in the morning, after Opal had had a full night’s rest. Wing and Wei followed, each casting a reluctant glance back into the room as they went. Then Tenzin was gone with the healer, and Korra and Lin were alone.

            “You make sure they tend to that shoulder,” Lin said, and though the words had come out a command her voice remained soft. “Putting it right is no problem, but it’ll be trouble if they don’t keep up with it. I’m going to go wake this combustion freak up and question the daylights out of him. It doesn’t take a genius to see his connection with what happened today.”

            “What should I tell Bolin?” Korra glanced to the bed, where the healers had begun to back away as if taking inventory of his progress. She swallowed a lump in her throat. “If he wakes up?”

            “Don’t think you’re going to have to worry about that,” Lin said. “He was in bad shape when we found him, no doubt about it. Healers said he was lucky to be alive at all, ten stories worth of concrete and metal on top of him. I didn’t realize he was in that mess for more than an hour after I arrived on scene. The twins couldn’t find him.” Lin stopped for a moment, the slightest edge of guilt in her voice, and she glanced toward the bed. “What happened just now: That was the first time he’s been awake since we brought him here. It’s a good sign, don’t get me wrong, but after all the excitement I doubt he’ll be back up any time soon.”

            Korra nodded, slightly reassured.

            “You get some rest,” Lin ordered. “I’ll need your help tomorrow.”

            Again, Korra nodded, and Lin walked purposefully out the door.

            Korra paced about the room for a while, keeping out of the way of the healers as they came and went, watching as they cleaned the mess that had been left by the sudden and unexpected attack, reminding them periodically to check on Bolin’s shoulder. Eventually she found a seat on the floor in the corner nearest the door and fidgeted for a while, occasionally glancing up and hoping for some news, and for a long time nothing came. She could see nothing of what the healers were doing. But over time their visits became shorter and shorter, and continued to dwindle until no one came at all.

            She was alone.

            For a time Korra continued sitting, fidgeting, picking at her fingernails, biting them, and repeating the cycle until she began to wonder why she had stayed at all. The healers had already verified that she could provide no assistance to them, and she imagined that all the danger would have left with the strange combustion bender. Lin’s guards had reported their sweep was clear. With the White Lotus arriving soon—or soon enough—and the already-present metalbending security force on the premises, there were plenty of safeguards even without her.

            But that man got in despite it all.

            Feeling lost and helpless, Korra closed her eyes but did not sleep for a time that could have been minutes or hours. She focused intently on listening, on waiting for a sound that did not belong, a thump or a crack or the soft squeaking of the door as it opened or closed. Instead she heard a gentle mumbling.

            It was all she needed to be on her feet, her heart in her throat. “Bolin?” she asked quietly, but there came no response, not even the sound of mumbling.

            Had she been hearing things?

            Cautiously, she approached the bed, her eyes straining in the semidarkness to see. At some point, he had rolled onto his side, and to Korra he now appeared much more sleeping than he seemed unconscious. Some of the color had come back to his face. Except for some thick black binding on his bare shoulder there was no indication that anything had gone wrong at all. The healers had done their job well.

            Caution turned to curiosity and Korra sat as she had earlier on the side of the bed, staring and trying to piece together what had happened, trying to reconcile Lin’s report with the building collapse and subsequent madness. Her mind would not cooperate. She was too tired. She yawned and stretched, and without thinking she lay down, a comfortable distance between her back and his front. She was asleep in seconds.

 

 

 

            Korra woke without waking and lay in comfortable warmth. She dared not open her eyes: She was too tired and knew that once she did, she would not be able to drift off again. Her body felt heavy and sluggish, her mind in an exhausted daze. Drowsy, she nestled in to the warmth and reached instinctively to pull the blanket tighter around her shoulders.

            There was no blanket.

            She remembered.

            This was the second time she had woke with Bolin’s arm around her middle. It was the second time they had shared a bed. But it was the first time that it felt strange. It was the first time that his bare skin was touching hers. Whether by accident or by choice, his hand had found its way beneath her shirt and rested lazily on her stomach. Startled, she reached to remove it.

            “Mmm, Opal.”

            Korra froze, her hand on his, and listened. There could be no mistaking it; he had talked in a voice that seemed not his own, low and hoarse and intensely quiet. As she lay, breath held tight, she could feel his lightly calloused fingers moving slowly and purposelessly in lazy circles around her middle.

            He thinks I’m Opal, she thought sleepily, and then hopeful, she rolled about to face him. “Bo—“ the word caught fast in her throat. His face was closer than she had thought, so close that their noses were nearly touching, but his eyes remained undoubtedly closed.

            “Opal,” he murmured again in the same quiet, husky voice, “I’m sorry.” His fingers traced goosebumps up her arm. “I’m so sorry.” His hand was on her face.

            He thinks I’m Opal, Korra thought again, and this time the idea came with more urgency.  A wave of pure panic washed over her, cut through the drowsiness and rooted her body to the spot. Should she wake him? Would he even wake if she tried? Would he even know what he was doing?

            Racked with indecision, she did not act in time.

            The kiss itself did not come as a surprise, but the feeling of it did. Warm and soft and altogether pleasant, it was over in an instant that left Korra stupefied. A long silence remained.

            “You’re not Opal.”

            Korra’s eyes popped open. The room remained dark, but she could see that Bolin’s eyes had opened as well. They remained heavy lidded and shuttered. “No, I’m not,” she replied gently, and somehow the shock she had felt moments before had gone. There remained no more anxiety, only relief and gratitude that he’d awakened at all. She didn’t flinch or pull away as his hand began to explore her face, touching her forehead, drawing one finger down her nose. He moved as though underwater, slow but deliberate.

            “You didn’t feel like Opal,” he said, and then a slow half-smile crept onto his face, a bashful and mildly ashamed smile. It faded after only a moment. “You’re Korra.” He tapped her pointedly between the collarbones. He had sounded proud of his declaration.

            A shred of worry crept up on Korra then, and her own tired smile faded. Something was wrong here even despite the good. There was something in the way Bolin moved, something in the dreamlike quality of his voice that unnerved her. There was a distance in his eyes, a thickness in his speech. It was a quality well beyond off. It felt as though she was talking to a child. She felt her brow knit with concern, and Bolin touched it.

            “Don’t make that face,” he slurred, and then he paused for a long time until Korra relaxed. “Did I kiss you?”

            “You did.”

            The slow smile came back; his fingers continued their tender exploration. “I’m sorry. I think I hit my head.”

            Korra nodded. An unexpected lump had developed in her throat that made the words hard to say. She felt her eyes growing suddenly quite warm. With a deep breath and a hard swallow, she said, “There was an accident.”

            But Bolin shook his head very slowly. He closed his eyes. “It wasn’t an accident.”

            So he remembered.

            When he opened his eyes again his expression had gone quite grave, burdened by something that Korra could not understand. “There was a man,” he started, but then he shook his head again and fell into silence, almost as if he had forgotten what he was going to say. “Everything hurts,” he groaned. “Everything’s blurry.”

            The lump grew. Korra could feel tears welling in her eyes. “Are you okay?” she asked. “Do you know what’s happening? Do you know what you’re doing?”

            Bolin looked back at her emptily. He had gone expressionless again, looked exceptionally tired. Korra finally pinpointed the off quality as some kind of delirium.

            Korra closed her eyes tight against the tears and turned her head away, but Bolin caught her gently by the chin and drew her back. Then his hand was on her cheek, his thumb brushing the moisture away. He looked confused again until she gave a great sniffle and rubbed at her own eyes, stifling the emotion. Once she regained her composure, his confusion seemed to go.

            For a while they lay in the brittle silence of predawn hours. Korra watched him carefully, marking the changes in his expression as he thought, and he absently continued to caress her arm with his fingertips, slowly moving up and down, up and down, so much that the motion seemed to be automatic, so much that it had ceased to give her goosebumps. But then he stopped with his hand on her wrist as if a thought had suddenly come to him, and he looked at Korra with a profound sadness.

            “I’m not going to remember this, am I?”

            It had been the first truly self-aware thing he had said since waking, though his face gave no indication that the clarity was genuine. He still looked tired, sick, and altogether confused. The dreamy tone in his voice persisted. Only now he sounded sad as well.

            The lump came back with force, and Korra shook her head, unable to respond. Her eyes filled with moisture once more.

            “If I won’t remember,” Bolin uttered pensively, and his hand began moving again. This time he did not follow her arm. This time his hand traced the contour of her hips, dipped into the small of her back, brushed against her spine and all the way up to her neck. The whole while his gaze stayed low. But then he looked up again, and his tired eyes confessed a desire that set a flutter in Korra’s stomach. Suddenly she remembered the South Pole, the conversation that they had had the morning after his bending came back. “If I won’t remember,” his voice had gone back to the same throaty whisper he had used when he first woke. “Then let me…Just once…” As he spoke he moved toward her again, this time quite slowly, as though he was afraid she might disappear. But Korra stayed, teary-eyed and startled by his sudden boldness. The hairs on the back of her neck stood straight up.

            This time the kiss was different. Full of purpose and intention, it sent a shock of cold electricity from her head to her toes and filled her with a tingling warmth from her toes to her head. She could not be sure when his hand had found its way back to her cheek, but she could feel the blushing of her skin as he made contact, the cold-but-hot rush of blood to her face as his mouth parted ever slightly beneath hers. For a single passionate moment, it lingered. Then it was through. Silence remained.

            “I think I loved you once,” Bolin sighed, his nose still touching hers, and he drew his thumb delicately over her lips. “But I can’t remember.”

            As if to punctuate his idea he kissed her again but gentler, barely enough to touch and release, and a second shock of electricity shot through her. Just as it reached her toes, he pulled away.

            At some point Korra had begun to cry. She could feel the wetness on her cheeks. Her vision swam. It had all been wrong, she thought, none of this should have happened. He shouldn't be here. She shouldn’t be here.

            “Why are you crying? Was it bad?”

            Against all instinct, Korra burst into tears. She wanted to say “No,” but the word would not come. She wanted to reassure him that it was not the kiss itself that had made her cry, but its implications, the consequences, the thoughts he’d left unfelt and unsaid for years. It was her own feeling of sudden overwhelming guilt for not being there to protect him. It was her own fear. Instead, between sobs she cried, “I want the old Bolin back!”

            To her surprise, Bolin’s mouth twitched in the slightest smile, a smile of understanding and acceptance, of resignation. He wrapped his arm around her once again and drew her in, all romantic intention apparently forgotten, and held her close as she wept. He cradled her head in his hand and stroked her hair as if to comfort a child, and when he spoke she could feel his lips brushing against her forehead. “Don’t cry,” he whispered. “It’ll be okay.” He paused, and a sad, sleepy tone entered his voice. “I won’t remember any of this,” he said. “It’ll be like a dream.”

            Korra sobbed again.

            “Don’t cry,” he repeated. “It was a good dream.”  



	14. Connections

            Mako woke to a gentle nudge, a whisper he couldn’t understand, and another nudge. Someone was tugging persistently on his arm and their voice carried a hint of panic. With every intention of telling whomever it was to go away and let him sleep, he groaned in reply.

            “No! You’ve got to get up!”

            The voice came in clearly this time, and Mako recognized it at once. It wasn’t Bingwei; it wasn’t any of his squadmates. It was Toru.

            “Come on!”

            Mako opened his eyes and stared at her. His head hurt. He felt vaguely sick. He recalled the night prior, the odd movers and strange foods, and he noted a significant emptiness in his stomach. Everything up until Guan’s speech had been clear as day in his mind, but anything that came after had gone utterly blank.

            “What happened?” Mako grumbled. As he sat he groped about his head. “Where am I?”

            “In the commons. You fell asleep here.”

            “What are you doing here?”

            “Making sure you don’t get in trouble.”

            When Mako looked to Toru she had put on a pleasant smile, an expression that indicated that everything she’d said had been genuine. Last time he’d seen her had been hectic and slightly frightening. It had been during his quarantine at the Boiling Rock, shortly after he woke from the explosion. She had given him a key, told him to look around, and advised him that a meeting would be taking place in which his fate would be discussed. He hadn’t seen Toru at all after that. 

            “What happened?” Mako said again, and this time he felt more urgency and the slightest indignation. “What…Why am I here? Where is my shirt?”

            “I’ll explain as we go. Follow me.”

            Toru pulled at his arm again, and Mako rose from the lounge upon which he’d apparently fallen asleep. It took all his effort to stay on his feet; his legs were wobbly and weak, as though he’d run a million miles. His whole body racked with fatigue.

            “Where are we going?”

            “First, to get you dressed,” she explained. “Then you’re due for training.”

            “And why are you here?”

            Toru rounded on Mako then, and stared at him with a hard expression. “I’m here on the arm of His Excellency, but…” she paused and looked down. “Well…That’s not important. You’re here. And I’m here. And we’re going to work together.”

            Confused, Mako continued to follow her. “So,” he said thoughtfully and slowly, hoping he wouldn’t upset her. “What happened?”

            “You were with the men last night,” Toru explained gently. “Enjoying the company of some of the captive women. Well, the rest of them were. You were having none of it.”

            Mako felt a heat rush into his face. “What now?”

            “You’re a man of real moral fiber,” Toru said with a genuine smile. Mako could hear it in her voice. “There was a lovely young girl who wanted to…Well, you told her no, and that she should go get a real job, and that she needed to put some clothes on, and then when she got upset you left.”

            Mako’s face screwed up. He was confused. He remembered none of this interaction whatsoever. Further, he wasn’t certain if he should be more embarrassed that he’d declined a strange girl’s invitation or angry that he’d been put in such a situation to begin with. 

            “How do you know all of this?”

            “I was there,” Toru replied flatly. “I watched it happen.”

            They had stopped outside of the door to Mako’s apartment, and he stared at her appraisingly. On a better day, he might have tried harder to understand the implications of her words. On a better day, he might have been able to read between the lines. Everything about her from her tone of voice to her body language to the way she was tiptoeing around the point suggested that she was either ashamed or guilty or embarrassed.

            She motioned for him to open the door, and Mako complied.

            “Go get dressed. You should’ve been given a second uniform. We can worry about finding the other half of this one later. Now hurry up.”

            Again, Mako complied. As he did so, he recognized the automacity of his motions, the way he responded to such orders without question or hesitation. He’d done the same with Bingwei yesterday. He’d done the same ever since he’d gotten off the boat from the Boiling Rock. The same wave of self-doubt he’d felt the day prior hit him again. He wondered if the fact that his compliance had become so instinctive was motivated by something more than the need to survive. He wondered if he was doing the right thing. Yes, he decided as he pulled on his shirt, this was right. This was the correct move. Gain intelligence and get back to Beifong.

            But what was Toru doing there? She’d said that she had been watching, that she had been a part of whatever festivities had happened the night before. Mako stood for a long time in his empty apartment with his hands atop the chest of drawers from which he’d pulled his spare uniform, staring hard at the wood and willing his sluggish mind to think.

            It hit him all at once.

            When Mako left the bedroom he did so with purpose. When he approached Toru in the sitting room where she stood staring out the balcony window, he spoke as gently as his current mood would allow. To his dismay, it wasn’t as gentle as he would have liked.

            “They used you,” he said curtly. “Last night.”

            Toru said nothing.

            “And me? I was supposed to… Last night when they…” Mako stammered for a moment, his brain lagging far behind his mouth. “What’s going on here? What kind of place is this?”

            This time, Toru turned around, and the same sad smile she’d worn since the day Mako had first laid eyes on her returned to her face. “Everyone has a place in His Excellency’s Society,” she said coolly, “even me. I can reassure you that my role isn’t what you think.”

            An anger welled up inside Mako that he’d not felt before, and indignation and embarrassment and horror all rolled into one gut-wrenching emotion. He groped for words for moment that felt like forever, but suddenly it seemed that there were too many thoughts in his head trying to come out all at once. He couldn’t decide what to say first.

            Instead, Toru spoke quietly. “Everyone has their place,” she said again. “And now that you’re a member of the elite, you have yours, too.”

            “But you said you were his fiancée!”

            “I was,” Toru said. “I was. But you see, that was before.”

            “Before what?” Mako roared. And then he stopped, uncertain of why he was angry with her at all. In the greater scheme of things, if what he believed was correct, he was in the much better position. After a long pause, he said quietly, “I’m sorry. I just don’t understand what’s going on, and I don’t understand what you’re doing here, and I’m confused.”

            Toru smiled again, and this time it seemed genuine. “I know,” she said gently. “There isn’t enough time for me to explain everything right now, but there will be time later. For now, I’ve got to get you to the yard so that you can take your place with the others. You’re already late, and it won’t do to have you in trouble on your first real day.”

            Toru’s smile widened, and she walked past Mako toward the door. She opened it and gestured him into the hallway.

            “Why are you smiling?”

            “Because you’re different.”

            Mako didn’t press the point. Instead, he followed quietly as Toru led him out of the apartment, past the commons, and out the front door. She spoke quietly as she walked.

            “You’re going to go train with your old squadmates today,” Toru said, “and then you’ll return to your apartments tonight.” She stopped and turned around. Beyond, Mako could see the open courtyard. Bingwei was there, yelling, and behind him stood only three of his old squad: Yaozhu, Fa, and Jing. Yaozhu waved timidly at Mako. “Mako?” Toru prompted. “Tonight you have a choice. You can partake with the men or retire to your room. Say you’re staying in, and then meet me in the commons at midnight. We can talk in private.”

            Mako nodded, and Toru left without another word. Though Bingwei and the others gave him strange and skeptical looks as he took his place beside them, no one said anything about her presence or why he had been late, and Mako took that as a blessing.

            He spent the rest of his day with Bingwei and his squad, and by lunchtime felt significantly better, both physically and emotionally. Perhaps it was because he’d had the chance to think about his conversation with Toru, about what she had said about his behavior the night prior, and though she’d left him with even more questions, particularly about potential human rights abuses, he couldn’t help but look forward to getting some answers and explanation. There had to be a reason for all of this.

            The training was not difficult, not even for Yaozhu and the rest. Mako had assumed that he would be learning how to yell, how to command, and how to generally mistreat his charges as Bingwei had done when they first arrived. Instead, they focused on items of a more tactical nature, on building trust and understanding of one another and their unique abilities. Bingwei had explained this as preparation for the mission, and had refused to elaborate.

            Adding to Mako’s decent mood was the knowledge that his squad had fared relatively well in his absence, short as it may have been. He never thought that he would miss them, but now he was surrounded by their familiar faces Mako felt a comfort that he sorely needed. More, as he learned about each of them he felt able to empathize, to understand their motivation for participating in this poor excuse for a society. He already knew, in part, that they were acting out of the need to preserve themselves and their safety. But he also learned that each of them had a larger stake in the operation. Yaozhu was seeking honor and status among his tribe of combustion benders. Fa’s family had been threatened outright, and it seemed that his willingness to follow orders came of his desire to save them. Jing had no family that he ever mentioned and as large as he was Mako could see no real benefit to having him along physically, but the more Jing spoke, the more Mako recognized his brilliance. He was thoughtful and more than capable of strategizing, which he demonstrated over dinner. When the lot of them were presented with a hypothetical scenario, Jing had organized a solution within ten minutes which played perfectly to the others’ strengths. But he lacked confidence, and Mako imagined that his participation was borne from his need to validate himself.

            None of it was unreasonable.

            Well after sundown, Bingwei dismissed Yaozhu, Fa, and Jing back to their dormitories and escorted Mako back to their own apartment, where they went their separate ways. Mako retired almost immediately to the showers—he still felt particularly dirty—and when he returned to his bedroom he lay on his bed in comfortable quiet. Bingwei returned after a time, explained briefly that he’d been in the kitchens, and then mentioned the possibility of going back down again later. Half dozed, Mako remembered his earlier conversation with Toru.

            “I’m going to stay in,” Mako said, sleepily. “You go ahead without me.”

            With a mischievous smile, Bingwei nodded. “I figured as much, a lightweight like you. Well, rest easy, then. We’ve got another long day tomorrow, and it won’t be nearly as easy as today.”

            Then Bingwei left.

            It took an hour of laying on his bed idly for Mako to begin feeling hungry, and when he exited to the kitchens he did so without much in the way of contemplation. The place was mostly empty except for a few older men who sat in a corner playing Pai Sho, and Mako took his dinner alone. He ate quickly, and once the food was gone he left.

            Halfway to his room, a clarity struck him: He was alone with all the time in the world. The bunkhouse was mostly empty, or it seemed mostly empty. No one had spoken to him all night long. No one had even looked at him. It was as though he were invisible.

            Perhaps he could explore.

All at once, Mako no longer felt a captive. All at once, he felt a detective, an investigator, an outsider taking a deep look into a world where he did not belong. It was in moments like this that he felt most comfortable, and now was no exception. When he reached the top of the stairs leading to his apartment he paused only briefly, and then headed the opposite direction.

            Mako discovered immediately that the whole upper floor was symmetrical, with the same long hallway on one side as on the other and what he presumed to be apartments on each side. At the end of his hallway and the other were doors leading into the same common bathroom and shower facility. There were the same number of doors, the same décor. Everything was the same down to the color and style of the doorknobs.

            If there was one thing Mako could glean from his exploration of the upstairs, it was that the society was more established than he’d thought. If each room housed two officers the same as his, and each officer was charged with the command of at least three other people, there were more than one hundred soldiers ready to deploy at any given point, and that was in his dormitory alone. There could be no telling how many similar housing units existed on this island. As he made his way downstairs, he promised himself that as soon as he was able he would explore beyond his dormitory and beyond the yard, would venture into places on the island he hadn’t yet seen.

            Mako’s knowledge of the lower level of the dormitory had thus far been limited to the kitchens, and seemingly for good reason. This area was not as deserted as the upper level had been, and periodically he passed by older men in nicer uniforms that looked at him with skeptical and oftentimes angry expressions. Though it was arranged in much the same way as the upper level, the doors were sparse and many were guarded. It did not take long for him to turn around and head back to the foyer. He would have to pursue his search at a time when the building was empty.    

            For the rest of the night Mako lounged in the common area. He spent a long time watching men as they came and went, sometimes with food from the kitchens, sometimes with girls hanging on their arms, sometimes completely alone. When that grew tiring he lay back and listened, eyes closed, and drifted in and out of a very light sleep.

            “You’re here early.”

            Mako sat up, mildly startled, and looked about. Toru stood at the top of the stairs, staring at him kindly, and he found himself fighting unexpected nerves. “I figured I’d wait.”

            Toru approached, but did not sit. “I see. Shall we go somewhere private?”

            Mako’s face screwed up with confusion. Where could they go that was private?

            “To your apartment,” Toru prompted.

            “But Bingwei told me that there was no privacy there,” Mako protested. He hadn’t been back to his apartment in a few hours. It was entirely possible that Bingwei was back, and if such was the case there would be no way to have a personal conversation. Bingwei had said so himself.

            But Toru seemed undeterred. She grasped Mako by the hand and pulled at his arm. “We can cross that bridge when we come to it. But I can’t stay here for long. Out in the open, I mean. Let’s go.”

            As he led Toru back to his apartment, Mako’s insides twisted with anxiety both good and bad. He would be getting answers to the questions he’d had for near two weeks, and would be getting them from a trustworthy source. But Toru’s behavior was unusual. She seemed nervous. What she had said about not being able to stay out in the open had struck Mako as strange, but considering her status in the society, if it was as he believed, it wasn’t necessarily surprising. More, the apprehension came from Toru's mere presence, her proximity, her touch, and Mako didn't know why.

            A walk through the apartment confirmed that it was empty and Mako gestured for Toru to sit on one of the couches, but she did not. Instead, she made her way to the enormous windowed doors overlooking the yard, and she opened them to the balcony. Mako followed her out, and joined her in leaning against the railing, looking out.

            “It’s nice to get outside,” Toru said gently. Now that Mako thought on the matter, everything about her seemed gentle. “I don’t get to be outside often.”

            Mako didn’t know how to respond. He said nothing.

            “I suppose you want to get down to it, then, and I can’t blame you. I promised you answers, and it’s time for me to make good on that promise.”

             All the questions Mako had had bubbled to the surface. He didn’t know which to ask first. There were too many. “Who are you?” Was the first thing that came out of his mouth, and as soon as he’d said it he felt slightly foolish.

            But Toru just smiled. “You know my name, obviously,” she began. “And you know that I’m from the Northern Water Tribe. My parents moved us to Republic City when I was three years old and I lived there for a while. I learned healing there.”

            “Why are you here?”

            “My parents arranged for me to marry. I didn’t think that political marriages existed any more, but they do, and mine was supposed to be that way. My parents traded me for power and money. But things weren’t so bad for a while. I didn’t mind. I wanted to help.”

            Again, Mako didn’t know how to respond. He didn’t even look at her. All he could do was stare out into the empty yard, watching the firelight flicker against the buildings from the beheaded fountain on the beach. He felt the slightest offense at her story, but it wasn't his place to comment.

            “Guan used to treat me well,” Toru continued, needing no prompting. “But then he lost his bending and things changed for the worst.”

            At this, Mako did respond as if on instinct. “Lost his bending?” he asked, an air of disbelief in his voice. He looked to Toru, but she didn’t look back. She was still staring out at the night the same as he had been. “What do you mean?”

            “I thought you’d know, being that you were in with the Avatar. He was a victim of the Equalist movement. He lost his bending. It was taken from him.”

            Dumbfounded, Mako stared. The Equalists had fallen apart so long ago he’d forgotten that they had ever existed. The whole event had had such a minimal impact on him that it didn’t seem to matter, it didn’t seem that he needed to remember it. But now he thought on the matter, Amon must have taken the abilities of countless benders, not just those at the revelation he attended with Korra. More striking than this, perhaps, was the realization that the leader of this firebending society was no longer a firebender himself. He was just as much a fraud as Amon had been, though certainly in a different way.

            Toru sighed deeply. “He was never the same after that. He got angry, didn’t have an outlet, and without his bending he was of no real use to his family. They were Triad, so nonbenders weren’t of much use.”

            “I know,” Mako said automatically. “I was Triad once, too.” He looked back into the yard and dropped his chin onto his hand. “But that was a long time ago. Probably before you were even around.”

            Toru shrugged. “It doesn’t matter now, I suppose.”

            "No, I suppose it doesn't."

            For a while the quiet lingered, and for that time Mako was content. But the longer he stood there idly the more restless he felt. There were still questions. There was still information to be had, and he knew that he should take advantage of Toru as an informant while he was able.

            "Why am I here?" Mako asked.

            “If you want to think about it philosophically, it must be fate," Toru replied quietly. "The concrete answer is that you're a firebender, and you’re valuable. Well, that's not entirely true. We didn't know who you were at first, but we had informants in Ba Sing Se who let us know that there were firebenders who needed liberation. We sent a quad of combustion benders..."

            "What's a quad?"

            "A group of four," Toru said, and the tone in her voice told Mako he should feel stupid for ever asking the question. "You've got your quad as well, and you'll go on missions with them soon."

            "Oh," Mako grunted, and now he thought on the matter it made perfect sense. There would be no way for him to keep track of eight other people, not as a rookie captain. To have his squad split into halves was the only reasonable solution.

            "We sent a quad of combustion benders to Ba Sing Se and set up the extraction," Toru continued, unfazed by Mako's contemplation, "and during its execution they noticed you. They brought you home with the other firebenders who were liberated that day."

            "They blew up the upper ring!" Mako protested. "There was no _extraction_ there, just explosion!"

            "And you should be glad. That explosion is the only reason you're here. My understanding is that you firebent it to protect Earth King Wu."

            "He's _not_ the king."

            Toru shrugged. "At any rate, it took a powerful bit of firebending to protect you and him from that blast. Our men saw you, and you were brought in and put under my care. That part was purely coincidence, you understand. Like I said, we didn't know who you were to begin with. It wasn't until I interviewed you and reported back to Guan that things got interesting. But I knew you were special from the start. I had a good feeling about you."

            "You keep saying things like that," Mako said contemplatively, "that I'm different and that I'm special. What does that even mean?"

            "It means exactly what you think it does. There's something about you that makes you stand apart from the others who I've worked with. Maybe it's kindness; maybe it's your willingness to defy. I don't know." Toru looked at him squarely, and Mako felt himself tense under her gaze. "I like you," she said flatly, "and I can't say that for the others. You're easy to talk to, and you listen. The others just fight or argue or order me around. They take advantage of me. You don't."

            Mako felt self-conscious now. "Thanks?"

            Toru giggled, and the anxiety in Mako's stomach swelled. It was a strange feeling that he couldn't place. His gut told him that something here was desperately wrong while his mind told him that all was well. But Toru's smile faded fast, and she said, "But you're different for Guan, too, not just for me. He did some digging on you and discovered your affiliation with the Triads."

            "Former," Mako corrected. "Like I said, that was a long time ago."

            "It doesn't matter. You're in, and there aren't many others who can say that. Guan is planning to send you back to Republic City to negotiate with the leaders of the Triads on his behalf, to pull them into the society and invite them to work alongside us. He wants them to act as our eyes and ears in the city. It's a very important task."

            "He's sending me back to Republic City?" Mako echoed. He fought a sense of elation at the news. He'd be able to contact Beifong. He'd be able to tell her everything that had happened. And he'd be able to see Korra and Asami. He'd be able to see Bolin. "When do I go?”

            "A week, two weeks, maybe. It’ll depend on the strength of your quad," Toru said with a shrug. "I don't know the schedules, I just know the destination and that your mission was marked as vital. It’s extremely risky. A lot of preparation has gone into your deployment."

            "What do you mean, preparation?"

            Toru looked to Mako with unmasked incredulity now, brows raised, eyes opened wide. Then her expression turned grave and with a tone of disbelief that he hadn't expected, she said, "I thought you knew."

            "Thought I knew what?"

            "About the preparations," Toru replied. Her voice contained some urgency now. "About your brother."

            Mako's stomach dropped out. In the chaos of the days following his transfer he had almost forgotten the conversation he'd heard between Guan and his advisors in which they had discussed ways to do away with _the brother_. But he had done all he could. He had sent the letter, had communicated the risk to Beifong. There should have been protections in place. And considering the strength of Bolin's relationship with Opal, Mako reasoned that Beifong would pay close attention: He was practically part of their family by now.

            But what if the letter never arrived? It had been a long shot to begin with. What if she hadn't received the warning? Could all this have happened so fast? It had only been a few days since he sent the letter. It had been just over a week since he arrived here. Hadn't it? Now that he thought on it, the time seemed a blur.

            "Mako?"

            The anxiety had come back with force, and Mako's whole body felt cold, his limbs numb. His stomach had tightened and his throat seemed to close. "What happened to my brother?" he asked in a deadly voice.

            Toru stepped back. The urgency on her face had changed. She looked distinctly afraid, perhaps worried, maybe concerned. Mako couldn't really tell, and he didn't really care. She had information. He could see it in her reaction.

            "What happened to Bolin?" Mako demanded again. A tremble had crept into his voice; a heaviness had taken residence in his chest, an overwhelming dread pressed down on him. 

            "I..." Toru stammered, her concern persisting through her voice, "I'm so sorry. I thought you knew."

            Mako shouted now, "What happened to my little brother?"

            By now Toru had backed up against the railing. Concern had turned to fear. "There were a few agents in the city," she said, her voice very quiet and very fast. "There were a few combustion benders in the underground awaiting orders. Guan has them everywhere, well mostly everywhere. They act as security; they carry out difficult tasks in hard-to-reach places. They work as special operatives."

            "What did you do?" Mako put emphasis on every word.

            "They brought down the building," Toru said vaguely. "It's all hearsay, I don't know exactly what happened, but I heard that they brought down the building he was in and...Well..."

            Mako couldn't understand the words. Certainly he heard them, but they made no sense. Silence took hold while his mind worked to decode the message, the implication. Meaning would not register. He repeated Toru very quietly, very slowly, his eyes locked on her face. "They brought down the building," he uttered dumbly, all his anger gone, "while he was in it."

            "I'm so sorry," Toru repeated. "I thought you knew."

            Mako leaned against the railing not of contemplation, but of necessity. His legs seemed unable to hold his weight. Words wouldn't come into his brain. He stared at the ground for a time, struggling to comprehend, and then with enormous effort he said, "Are you trying to tell me that my little brother is dead?"

            Toru nodded. The motion was short, scarcely more than a twitch, but it was all Mako needed. The idea exploded in his mind. They hadn't received the letter. They hadn't provided the extra protection. His message hadn't been received in time. Bolin had been attacked. Bolin had been killed.

            Bolin was dead.

            "Mako?"

            He didn't hear Toru speaking and didn't see her approach. His eyes had locked on the ground and his mind racked with incomprehension. There was no way. It couldn't be true. Bolin wouldn't have gone like that. He would've bent the rock around him. He would have protected himself. He'd done it a thousand times. But if he didn't have footing, if he couldn't ground himself... Mako knew enough about earthbending to understand its limitations. There would be no drawing forth the rock if there was no contact with the ground.

            "Mako?"

            Tiny spots of darkness crawled around his vision. Toru touched his arm so tenderly that he scarcely felt the connection. Everything was numb, his legs had gone to jelly and he slumped to the ground. He couldn't breathe. A silent hysteria had come upon him that he couldn't begin to bury. All he could do was sit and stare and hold his breath.

 

            Mako woke up on the ground.

            "You scared me."

            He looked up to find Toru closer than she had been before. Somehow she was cradling his head in her lap, was holding him at least partially off of the cold concrete of the balcony. She wore a look of pity.

            "You fainted," she said, and she put her hand softly on his cheek. Her skin felt warm to the touch. A sheen of cold sweat covered his whole body. "I tried to catch you, but..."

            Mako felt his eyes go very wide as the haze of unconsciousness faded. His mind was catching up to reality. He remembered what she had said. "No," he whispered, and the piteous look on Toru's face deepened. "No!" He fought to sit upright, but Toru held him down, her hands firmly on his shoulders. The hysteria was coming back, and this time it wasn't quiet. This time it was violent and overpowering and uncontrollable. Mako's head was swimming, his mind was stuck focused on one unfathomable and unacceptable truth. Bolin was gone. He was dead. He had died alone. It could have been horrible: He could have suffocated. He could have been crushed by the weight of the building. If a combustion bender had attacked him straight on, he could have been burned to death or worse. Mako imagined the remains, and his body gave a mighty jerk against Toru's grip, but she held on tighter, bent over him and wrapped him in her arms.

            "I'm so sorry," she said. "I'm so, so sorry."

            "No," Mako said. It was the only word that would come to him. It was the only word he could force past the lump in his throat. "No."

            "I thought you knew. You shouldn't have found out like this. I'm so sorry."

            "No," Mako said again. His face had grown very hot, but his skin remained so cold that goosebumps sprang all up and down his arms. His body felt both immovably heavy and filled with unmanageable energy. For a while he tried to suppress it and for a while he succeeded, but then his body started to tremble. At once he clapped his hands over his face and broke.

            Toru held him close while he cried, and Mako didn't care. She said nothing and moved only to draw him in. She stayed curled over him, her arms around his shoulders, and he pressed his face into her middle to muffle his noise. Eventually he found himself laying there with his eyes closed, and all the tension and anxiety and grief he had felt was replaced with an emptiness so complete that he felt it would swallow him whole.

            He hoped it would swallow him whole.

            "It's late," Toru whispered. “Let’s get you inside.” She straightened and wrapped her arm round Mako's shoulders to help him sit upright.

            But Mako could only sit and stare at his feet, unthinking and unfeeling, and she allowed him to stay that way for a while. When she pulled him to his feet and ushered him toward his bed, he moved along with her. She mentioned briefly that she was glad he had already changed out of his uniform, but Mako barely registered that she had spoken. She sat him on the bedroom chair, fussed with his bed, and then helped him to it. He sat in the quiet as she situated the blankets around him, and then she moved to leave.

            "Don't go," Mako said. His voice sounded flat and listless, the words seemed to have floated out of him without thinking. "Don't leave."

            Toru rounded back on him, and the look she gave him filled the emptiness with a dull jolt that sat in his belly like a rock that grew ever more dense with each step she took toward him. Then she sat and the rock shattered into a jumble of conflicting emotions. He felt empty but full. Warm but cold. Destroyed but somehow intact, as though her very presence was holding him together. What else did he have? Who else did he have?

            Bolin was gone, and he was all Mako had. His extended family was too far removed to really matter. For a fleeting moment, he considered Korra and he considered Asami, but when he considered them together he recognized that there would be no room for him. He wondered if they even thought of him. He wondered if they had moved on with their lives, believing that he himself was gone. Yes, he'd be going to Republic City, but how would he be able to face anyone? How would they react knowing the truth of his absence? Had he been in Republic City he could've helped, could've prevented Bolin from...

            Mako’s breath caught in his throat, and he pressed his face into his pillow as another wave of grief came over him. He forced himself to breathe deep, hold the inhale, breathe out. But when Toru touched his shoulder he broke again. She murmured at him quietly, in a voice that was altogether motherly, repeating words that Mako neither heard nor understood. But somehow it calmed him. It comforted him, and more than ever he would accept that comfort without question.

            She was still there when he fell asleep.

  



	15. Anxiety

            The days immediately following the collapse passed in a blur of confusion and panic. Korra spent as little time in Bolin's room as she possibly could, leaving immediately the following morning when the White Lotus sentries arrived under the excuse that she needed to go speak to Lin at police headquarters. It wasn't entirely true, but Korra didn't care. She just needed some space. She needed some time to think. She needed some sleep.

            When she arrived at Air Temple Island she retired to an unusually long bath, during which she contemplated the night prior and decided that it had been wholly terrifying. It had been surreal. It had been unnerving, uncanny. There was no doubt that Bolin hadn't been in his right mind, and that truth had been frightening. There had been something altogether inhuman about him. More, of sound mind he never would have done something so brash. He never would have touched her the way that he had. He never would have kissed her. While he had always been outgoing, he had never been quite so _forward_.

            But somewhere amid the terror there remained the slightest warmth, and every time she thought about what had happened it spread a little more. The whole interaction had felt both entirely wrong yet somehow reassuring. He had waked, had spoken, had been able to put together words in a way that was coherent enough, and that was more than she ever expected. The kiss hadn't been bad either. Honestly, it might have been pleasant in a different time and under different circumstances. It had been supremely romantic, if nothing else, and in her wildest imagination Korra never thought Bolin to be capable of that.

            As she lay down to nap, she felt vaguely jealous of Opal.

            She spent the remainder of that afternoon well away from the hospital. Lin came to call shortly after noon, and together the two of them made their way to Avatar Aang Memorial Island where they exhumed the platinum box and transported it to police headquarters. Much to Korra's surprise, Lin didn't open it.

            "I'm going to have some healers come in to see what they can do with the remains. I spoke with someone over at the hospital about it, and they said that they might be able to help."

            "Oh," Korra replied, downcast. It wasn't that she was looking forward to seeing whatever lump of flesh remained in the casket. She just wanted to know the truth as soon as possible. "Did you get anything out of the combustion bender?"

            Lin shook her head. "He won't crack," she said icily. "Says he's not afraid of me or anything I can do. I don't know how to get him to talk."

            Korra sighed deeply. "Doesn't that kind of prove his guilt?"

            With a shrug, Lin said, "The fact that he was in that room at all says something. There isn't a hospital in the whole city that's ever employed a combustion bender. They're too rare. Nobody in the whole building could identify him or explain how he might've gotten in or how he got the uniform. I've got no records on him at all. Don't even know his name."

            "Do you have anything at all? About any of this?"

            "Not really. Nothing new since yesterday, and we probably won't have anything until either Bolin starts making sense or that combustion bender starts talking."

            Korra's stomach jerked. "Until Bolin starts making sense?" She wondered if he had said something about last night. The panic started bubbling again.

            "I was up there with Tenzin before I came to get you. The kid woke up for an hour or so and wasn't talking straight. He was just babbling all kinds of nonsense and not much of it was grounded in reality. Told Tenzin he looked like a flying hog monkey in his wingsuit and kept insisting that I'm the reason his arm is all banged up. I mean, he was pleasant; he seemed pretty happy to be insulting us, all things considered. But it was clear he didn't have the slightest idea what he was saying."

            "Is he okay?"

            Again, Lin shrugged. "Depends on what you mean by okay. He's alive. He's awake. He can move everything. He can clearly talk, not that that's ever been an issue for him. He knows his numbers; Opal was quizzing him all morning. He's not right, though. Not yet. He's slow." Then Lin shrugged and added haplessly, "Slower than usual, anyway."

            "What does he remember?" Korra was going to press this point. She figured that Lin was safe, that if Bolin had said anything to her she wouldn't read too far into it. Lin was objective. Lin didn't care who kissed whom.

            But Lin's face screwed up. Korra couldn't tell if she looked irate or confused. "How am I supposed to know?" she asked gruffly. "The hardest question he answered today was what number comes after nine, and he could barely focus on that much. He'll be having a perfectly reasonable conversation about how he's doing, about how he's feeling, and the next minute he's telling me all the irresponsible things he and Opal have done together, and thank goodness Su wasn't there for that mess. He says anything that comes to mind, no matter how ridiculous it is. His brain isn't connected to his mouth, and even if it was you can barely understand him."

            "He didn't say anything, then?"

            "What are you going on about?" Lin snapped, and Korra knew now that she was getting frustrated. "Did something happen? Did he say something to you?"

            Korra felt her eyes widen at this, felt the color drain from her face. It seemed Lin noticed this as well, as she gave Korra a deadly look that said in no uncertain terms that if she didn't speak, Lin would force it out of her. "He woke up for a little bit last night," Korra said carefully. "He... He told me he thought he hit his head and I told him he'd been in an accident. He said that it wasn't an accident." She paused and Lin's expression softened.       Korra continued, "I asked him what he remembered, I thought maybe he'd have something to say, but all he told me was that there was a man. Then he stopped like he forgot what he was talking about and told me that he couldn't see and that everything hurt."

            "Can't imagine why." Lin paused then for a beat, then breathed deeply. She took on the same tender tone she'd used the night prior when she and Korra were alone. "Look, I've got to head back up there to let the healers know we've got the body." She said this as though there was some extra meaning. She looked at Korra as though inviting her along.

            Korra just slumped. "I don't know. I don't think I'm ready to go back there yet," she said, and the admission wasn't a lie. She wasn't ready to see Bolin. She wasn't sure how he would react if he was even awake. She wasn't sure how she would react. She felt enough anxiety just _thinking_ about being in the same room as him.

            "Fine with me, I guess. If you need something to do you can always go down to the site and see what you can find. I've had metalbenders down there most of the morning but they haven't gotten back to me with anything."

            "Maybe."

            Lin escorted Korra from the precinct, and the two went their separate ways.

            For a while, Korra contemplated a trip to the site of the collapse, but no matter how much she thought on it she couldn't see how it would benefit anyone. What could she possibly find that would help? Lin had already said that evidence of explosions had been found. What more would there be? Crushed stones? Bent metal? Bolin's blood?

            Korra went back to Air Temple Island and spent the rest of the day alone. She tried to meditate, but couldn't focus. She tried to train, but her body felt sluggish. She ate a small dinner with Pema and then retired to bed.

 

 

            Next morning, Tenzin roused Korra urgently, and for a moment Korra thought she was dreaming of the night he told her about Bolin. In the same way as he had that night, he explained that Lin had phoned and that they were to meet at the hospital. But when Korra questioned him on the matter, bleary-eyed and sleepy, he couldn't answer. He didn't know what was going on either. He only said it sounded important.

            Tenzin's urgency had frightened Korra so much that she didn't stop to think about the fact that she would be in proximity to Bolin, not until they met Asami at the hospital's front entrance. As they made their way toward his room, Asami barraged Tenzin with questions: What was the matter? Was Bolin okay? Had something else happened? She seemed distraught and explained that when she had come to visit over dinner last night everything had seemed fine--or fine enough considering the circumstance.

            Lin met them outside Bolin's door.

            "Glad you made it so quick," Lin said, and then she poked her head into Bolin's room and called for Opal and Su to join them. Korra could hear them speaking through the open door, and when Bolin protested Opal leaving, a knot came into her stomach. A few moments later the two Beifongs emerged, and Lin began to explain. "There's good news and bad news," she said curtly. "The good news is that the body we buried isn't Mako."

            Korra looked about to read the surprised expressions of the rest. Lin had said the words so plainly, with so little fanfare that their bluntness almost hurt. She might've expected them to look happy or that she would feel happy herself, but there seemed to be nothing of the kind in anyone's face. They just looked confused. She said, "The healers worked quick, then."

            "The healers haven't touched it," Lin snapped. Then she reached into the pouch on her hip and produced a small rolled note, which she unfolded and handed to Korra. "I got this letter from a beat cop first thing this morning. He said it came from an Earth Nation ship that docked last night and whose crew passed through a Republic City checkpoint. Was attached to the leg of a Fire Nation hawk. It's a shame we didn't get it sooner, it could've prevented a lot of headache."

            Korra read aloud, a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. "I'm alive. Boiling Rock quarantine, moved to Fire Fountain City. Military camp. Protect Firelord. Protect lavabender." She looked to Lin with a face full of realization and handed back the letter. "It's from Mako?"

            Lin shrugged haplessly. "I'd know his sloppy handwriting anywhere. It was addressed to the Republic City police. Who else would do something like that? Besides, who else really knows about Bolin’s lavabending? I've already contacted the Firelord and advised her to step up security, but she's already fairly well protected and hasn't seen any action out of the ordinary. Explains a lot that's been happening around here lately, though."

            "You think Mako knew that Bolin was going to be attacked?" Asami asked, a genuine curiosity in her voice. "Do you think he sent that letter as warning?"

            "I'm absolutely certain of it, not that we know why," Lin replied. "Like I said, it would've been more useful if we had gotten it a few days ago. Anyway, the damage has already been done here so there's not much else to do besides get that combustion bender to spill."

            "We should tell Bolin," Opal said. "Now that we know the truth, we ought to let him know."

            "The only thing this letter tells us is that Mako survived Ba Sing Se," Lin reasoned. "Doesn't mean he's alive now. Doesn't mean we know where he is. We have no idea when he might have written this. We ought to keep our quiet here until we've got facts."

            No one argued the point, not even Opal, and Korra wasn't sure if it was because they had gotten tired of the matter or because they agreed with Lin. She wasn't sure how she felt about it herself.

            "I want to arrange a flyover of these places," Lin said, "but it'll take some time to get everything settled. Until then, I suppose we sit tight and wait."

            "It's going to be hard to keep this from him," Asami said flatly, and she looked at the closed door. Then she looked to Lin coldly. "Do you really think it's for the best to keep this a secret?"

            "You can walk in there and tell him anything you want right now," said Lin sardonically, and she actually motioned toward the door, "he's not going to understand a word you say. You know that as much as I do. Bolin needs to focus on healing, not on running off to the end of the world on the off chance that he'll find his brother. Trust me, Asami, I've thought long and hard about this. We tell Bolin that there's a chance he'll find Mako and he'd _walk_ to the Fire Nation if he had to, and he can't even walk to the bathroom on his own right now. We don't know that Mako is still there. We don't know that he's alive at all. We could go investigate these places and find out that they're abandoned, that they were temporary camps, and even if they're occupied, who's to say Mako will still be there? We tread lightly until we've got something concrete."

            Now Opal did speak, and she did so with quiet conviction. "We should take him when we go."

            "We?" Su asked. She had sounded skeptical.

            "Of course I'm going," Opal said. "And we're going to take Bolin with us."

            "He's not going anywhere right now," Lin said.

            "No," Opal replied, her voice full of attitude, "but you just said it would take time for the arrangements to be made with Firelord Izumi, didn't you? We give him enough time to heal and he can come with."

            "It's not a bad idea," said Tenzin thoughtfully and all eyes turned to him. His gaze was locked on Lin. "After everything you told me, it seems like all he wants to do is find answers. Perhaps tagging along on this investigation will help him feel like he's doing something. It'll give him purpose."

            Lin just shrugged.

            "I don't think it'll hurt either," Su agreed. "Once he's got his head back we ought to tell him that Korra, Asami, and Opal are going to follow a lead you got--we don't need to tell him _where_ you got it--and that they want him to tag along. He won't care about details, and it might encourage him to get well faster. What do you think, Korra?"

            To this point Korra had remained intentionally silent. What could she say to all of this? That she didn't want to go?  That she didn't want him to go? Even if she said it out loud she'd have no good reason to back it up. Even Tenzin had said that Bolin ought to go with. There would be no way to convey her feelings on the matter without it seeming like something was wrong, and up to now she had done an incredibly good job of concealing her apprehension. At least, she thought she had.

            "Korra?" Asami prompted, and she touched her hand to Korra's elbow.

            "Yeah!" Korra said at once and with perhaps too much enthusiasm in her tone. "I think that's a good idea."

            She regretted at once that she had said it. An awkward silence told her that the words had come out wrong.

            "I'd like you to come by the station, Korra," Lin said after a few moments. "I want you to take a crack at the combustion bender."

            "When?" Korra asked. She had to work hard to make certain her voice remained neutral. She didn't want to draw any more attention to herself than she already had.

            "Later tonight is fine, after the dinner hour. You can stay here and visit for a while. I'll try to get some calls in until then." She looked at Tenzin pointedly. "I could use your help for the diplomacy, if you don't mind."

            Tenzin nodded curtly, and he followed Lin away down the hall.

            Once Tenzin and Lin had gone, the mood in the hallway seemed to change for the better. Almost at once, Asami perked up and said that she had planned to stay for a while anyway, and that they could keep Bolin company if Opal and Su wanted a break. Predictably, Opal refused to go anywhere, but Su seemed very slightly relieved at the idea. Moments later, Opal and Asami had disappeared into the room, and Korra lagged awkwardly behind.

            "Hey," Su said. She caught Korra by the shoulder. "Are you all right?" Su looked unconvinced when Korra put on her best fake smile. She raised an eyebrow. "You seem a little preoccupied. Don't get so caught up in this that you stop taking care of yourself."

            The smile turned genuine, and Korra said, "I won't. Thanks, Su."

            "You kids have fun," Su said, and it seemed to Korra that all her skepticism had gone. "I'll be back in a while with some dinner."

            With a wave, she left.

            Korra stood alone in the hallway and stared at the door. She didn't want to go in there. She didn't want to see Bolin as she had two nights ago, all delirious and deathly pale. She didn't want to listen to him rambling incoherently about whatever came into his mind, as Lin said he had been doing. But most of all, she didn't want to think about the fact that he had kissed her, especially not with both Asami and Opal in the room to hear about it if her presence jogged his memory. But again, it seemed there was no way out. Asami and Opal would be curious, if not outright upset, if Korra didn't join them soon. So she breathed deep three times, steeled herself against the mounting nervousness, and entered the room.

            The nerves melted away at once when she saw the delighted expression on Bolin's face.

            "Korra!"

            She just stood there dumbly.

            "That is Korra, isn't it?" Bolin had leaned over and spoken in an undertone to Asami. The same confused expression that Korra remembered had come to his face, but that was really the only thing about him that was the same. Though still pale, his color had begun to come back. His speech was mostly coherent and lacked the dreamy tone, but it retained a slight rasp and was not nearly as strong as usual. He spoke slowly, uncertainly. "I mean...That _is_ Korra, right?"

            "It's Korra," Asami laughed, and then she beckoned Korra over as well.

"I was starting to wonder if you were going to show up," Bolin said, and he threw his arms wide as Korra approached. She noted a distinct weakness in his right arm. It moved slower, had less range of motion than the left. "I thought you forgot about me!"

            "I didn't forget about you," Korra said kindly, a sincere grin tugging at the corner of her mouth. How _could_ she have forgotten about him? It seemed she could barely stop thinking about him, could barely stop panicking about what had happened. As soon as she was within arm's reach he pulled her onto the bed and wrapped her in an embrace so tight that she was forced to hold her breath, and a chill ran down her spine. Then he let her go.

            "I thought we could play some Pai Sho," Asami said brightly, and she dug in her bag to produce the board, which she brandished at Bolin. "We can play doubles."

            He looked at Opal, concerned, as though he wanted to ask her if he remembered how to play or if he even knew what Pai Sho was. But she smiled at him and gave the slightest jerk of her head, and he turned back to Asami and nodded as well.

            "Sit up, then" Asami said, and she patted Bolin's leg. "We need some room."

            He complied, though the movement required some tremendous effort, and as he pulled himself toward the headboard he grimaced and Korra could hear the softest groan. But then he was fully upright, his legs crossed beneath the blanket, and he looked between Opal and Asami. His face fell almost immediately. "Why am I sitting up, again?"

            "Pai Sho," Asami said frankly, and she shot a knowing glance to Opal. But Opal just shrugged, and Asami lay the board in the middle of the blanket. Then she nudged Bolin's arm as if to tell him to move over, but recoiled immediately when he jerked away. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I forgot!"

            For a few moments after, Bolin sat with a pained expression, bent low with his left hand clutching his right shoulder. Then he inhaled deep, exhaled slowly, and righted himself again. Though a slightly anguished look remained on his face, he didn't say a word about it. As if nothing at all had happened, he moved labouredly to his left and Asami sat down beside him.

            "Really, I'm sorry," Asami said, and she rubbed at his back lightly. "Are you okay? I didn't hurt you too badly, did I?"

            "Don't worry about it," Bolin replied, and all the joy seemed to have gone out of his voice. He hadn't sounded sad, per se, but he certainly wasn't happy about it either. "I've hurt it more times in the last..." He stopped suddenly, as if he had forgotten what he was about to say, and a look of purest concentration came to him. Then he looked at Opal. "How long have I been awake?"

            "Today? About four hours," Opal replied. It seemed her mood hadn't been affected by the exchange. "You were up for about eight yesterday, all together." Then Opal looked to Korra. "Come on, sit down. You're not going to hurt anything."

            Korra sat tentatively at the foot of the bed and continued to watch.

            Bolin had gone silent, had been staring at his hands folded in his lap as though very deep in thought. Korra noticed his fingers just barely moving and realized, mildly horrified, that he was trying to add the numbers Opal had given him. Then he looked at Asami purposefully and said, "I've hurt it more in the twelve hours I've been awake than you could imagine." There was a definite cynicism about the way he'd said the words. Then his voice relaxed and he pouted. "The healers told me if I'm not careful I'll dislocate it again."

            "I know," Asami said. "I was here when they told you. Twice."

            "Oh. I forgot."

            "I knew you would."

            "And Lin told me if I keep poking at it she'll dislocate the other one, too."

            Opal laughed. Then Asami laughed. Any negativity was forgotten, and Asami set the Pai Sho board.

            They played three games before Bolin's attention deteriorated too much to continue. The lot of them remained in extremely high spirits, even when they had to repeat instructions and rules, when they had to tell Bolin twice to stop messing with his shoulder after he tweaked it the wrong way and spent a solid ten minutes trying to set it back right.

            Given the distraction, Korra had forgotten her nerves. The whole afternoon felt the same as any ordinary afternoon spent in the company of her friends. She didn't think about Mako's letter, didn't think about the body she and Lin had exhumed, about the combustion bender presently in custody. She didn't think about the kiss or the feeling it had given her.

            Su arrived back to the room with dinner, and they all ate together. Even Bolin stole a few bites from Opal’s box, though he insisted for the most part that he simply hadn’t been all that hungry since he’d waked. After dinner things quieted down and Bolin quickly tired. Opal helped him to lay back down, then curled up beside him with her head resting on his good shoulder, and he was well asleep by the time Korra and Asami left for the precinct.

            After briefly questioning them about their afternoon, Lin escorted them to a waiting car, and they were off. Korra hadn't thought to ask exactly where they were going, and she continued to sit in the quiet, listening to Asami and Lin prattle on about Bolin's troubled shoulder and how Lin was going to have to give him a "stern talking to" on the matter.

            "I'm not really sure, but I think he knocked it out again today," Asami said.

            "I'm going to knock _him_ out," Lin replied.

            "Has that been a problem?" Korra asked. "It coming back out? Is that what happened?"

            "He did it twice yesterday, but I don’t think he remembers it," Asami said with a shrug. "Once when he got up to try and go to the bathroom without telling anyone..."

            "And wound up confused and on the floor," Lin grumbled.

            "And somehow he did it once in his sleep, right before I left for the night," Asami finished.

            "Idiot, that boy is."

            Korra smiled. It seemed that Lin had developed a soft spot.

            Some time later, the automobile stopped outside of a large metal building well outside of city limits, and Lin helped Korra and Asami out. As they walked toward the building, she explained that this was the single-celled facility where they were holding the combustion bender. She said that he had remained under constant surveillance since arriving, and though he sat in a room completely alone and restrained, he seemed no worse off than when he'd arrived.

            "I don't want you to think I'm trying to exploit you," Lin said, and she stopped outside a metal door with no handles, "but I thought maybe if you went into the Avatar state you might scare some information out of him."

            Korra shrugged, looked to Asami uncertainly, and Lin opened the door.

            The combustion bender sat on the floor in the center of the room with his hands and feet shackled in short, thick, platinum chains that left almost no room for motion at all. The tattoo on his baldhead had been covered completely with a thick metal plate, but his yellow-orange eyes remained uncovered and he glared daggers at the three as they entered. Though he sat immobile and restrained, he definitely seemed more imposing now than he had while lying unconscious on the floor of Bolin's hospital room.

            "So, you're so desperate you had to bring in the Avatar," he sneered. "Pitiful."

            Korra looked to Lin for guidance, but Lin just shrugged and motioned toward him. Korra didn't know exactly what she was going to do to get answers out of him, and as she approached, a sinking feeling grabbed hold of her insides. She sat down before the combustion bender, far enough away that he would not be able to lash out at her, crossed her legs, and looked at him curiously.

            "I suppose I don't need to introduce myself, then," Korra said. Historically, she had always handled these types of situations in the same way: Approach with initial kindness and only resort to force if it was required. She didn't truly believe it would work, it so rarely worked at all, but she would try it all the same. "I want to make it very, very clear to you that I'm not here because Lin asked me to be here," she said, and though there was a firmness to her voice she made certain to hold back her anger. "I'm here because you attacked one of my best friends without any reason, you tried to kill him in cold blood, and I want to know why."

            The combustion bender smirked. Crow’s feet deepened at the corners of his eyes. Despite his iron expression, the wrinkles about his face told Korra he had spent a fair portion of his life in a happier place. She wondered what had changed to make him so vile.

            "My mission is my own business," said the man.

            "Why did you attack Bolin?"

            "Because I was given his name."

            Korra rocked back just slightly, folded her hands in her lap, and felt a curiosity tugging at her face. "So, you're a killer for hire? A mercenary?"

            "I am whatever you think I am. You've already made up your mind."

            Korra plopped her chin down on her hand and remained quiet for a time. She racked her brain to think of ways to get him to talk, to say anything at all, even if it was minor. "Okay," she said, settling on the matter, "I want to make sure I understand this. You won't give us your name, you won't tell us who sent you, and you won't tell us a _good_ reason why you attacked Bolin. You've already been captured and restrained. We're clearly not going to let you go until we get some kind of information, so it's in your best interest to speak up. Considering all that, why won't you tell us anything?"

            "I have no reason to tell you anything."

            For a few moments, Korra was struck dumb by this man's stubbornness. It seemed kindness would not work. "What's to prevent me from going into the Avatar state and forcing the answers out of you?"

            Again, the combustion bender smirked. He never broke eye contact. He seemed so sure of himself, so cocky. "Go into the Avatar state if you want. There's nothing you can do to me that will make me answer your questions. Bend at me, Avatar, use every element available to you. Beat me to within an inch of my life if you must. I've seen it all. I've endured it all. I can withstand anything you can throw at me and more."

            Korra stared at the man for a long time, her eyes narrowed and her mind working. He had said to her exactly the same thing he had said to Lin, according to Lin's account. It seemed silly to bother with any more threats, especially if they likely wouldn't work. "All right," she said, finally settled on the matter. "If you won't tell me why you did it, and you won't tell me where you came from or who gave you orders, at least tell me your name. Then we can be on even footing."

            "There's no even footing here, Avatar. I'm in chains."

            Korra stood, and the combustion bender spat at her feet. She turned about and walked away. Lin looked disappointed and very slightly angry, but Korra didn't mind. The seed of a plan had taken root in the back of her mind.

            As they moved toward the exit, the combustion bender laughed coldly. "You gave up faster than I thought you would, Avatar! Better luck next time."

            Korra wouldn't dignify him with a response.

            "That was fast," Asami said as they exited the compound. There was no judgment in her voice at all. "I figured you'd talk to him a bit longer."

            But Korra shrugged. "I didn't need to talk to him anymore. I got everything I needed."

            "How could you have possibly gotten anything out of that?" Lin asked, and there _was_ judgment in her voice. "You were at it for less than ten minutes."

            The conversation paused as the three ladies entered the car and embarked for Republic City.

            "Well," Korra began thoughtfully, "you said it to me before, Lin, that he's not afraid of you. It's clear he's not afraid of me either. He said it himself, didn't he? I could've gone into the Avatar state, yeah, but what good would it have done? I could bend every element at him at the same time, and he wouldn't flinch. That's what he said. I could use the strength of the Avatar state to beat the information out of him, but he said he won't budge for that either. So why should I make him think he's won by proving him right?"

            "He already thinks he won," Lin said.

            "But he hasn't," Korra said. "The fight hasn't even started yet, if you ask me."

            Asami leaned forward, her brow quirked in confusion. "You have a plan, then? Did you leave because you thought of something?"

            "Yep."

            It took a few seconds of silence for Lin to say, "Are you going to tell us about it or not?" She sounded angrier still.

            At this, Korra couldn't help but smile. In the cell itself the idea had been the tiniest speck, but now she thought on it, it had begun to grow. There was genius in the plan. There was also a lot of stupidity in the plan, she realized, but the potential was far too good to pass up.

            "He said he's seen it all before," Korra explained deliberately. "He said that he's been through everything we could give him: earthbending, waterbending, firebending, airbending, nonbending. It doesn't matter. It's all old hat for him. So," she paused, a brightness entering her voice, "let's give him something new. Let's give him something he _hasn't_ seen before."

            Lin glanced at Korra skeptically from the front seat, and Asami's confused expression had become perhaps more confused, if such a thing was possible.

            "Do you think you can keep him locked up for another few days? A week? Max, two?" Korra asked.

            "I can keep him locked up until he's dust if I want to," Lin replied.

            "Good. Keep him in there. Don't send any more metalbenders in; it'll just make him more confident. You give me some time, and we'll get him to talk."

            "How?" Asami asked. Now she sounded slightly frustrated, too.

            But Korra just reclined in her seat and folded her hands behind her head, smug and satisfied, all her prior nervousness and uncertainty forgotten in her moment of genius. She simply said, "We have a lavabender."

  



	16. Waterbending

            It was a full seven days after the collapse before the healers felt comfortable enough to discharge Bolin into Tenzin's watchful custody. The morning of his release, Bolin managed to recount to the healers every injury he had sustained in the collapse including those already healed, every recommendation they made for his recovery, and every restriction he would have to observe and for how long he would have to observe them. Of course, he recited these items slowly, with perhaps more intensive thought than usual, but he did it all the same, and it seemed to have been enough.

            Each day had been a struggle. He had known all along how brainless he had seemed, and yet had been powerless to control it. He remembered only fragments of moments from the first three days after the collapse, and even those fragments remained fuzzy around the edges. His cognizance had returned to him slowly, and try as he might Bolin could not put his finger on exactly when his mind had finally come back.

            And even then, his mind hadn't really come back.

            Every conversation took incredible effort. Every sentence took careful planning. And even the thoughts that precipitated the words did not come fluidly. His brain seemed only to be working in fits and starts, when it worked at all, and he found himself blanking between words and leaving off in the middle of thoughts more often than he completed them. Worse, he found himself working too hard to keep an even keel emotionally. 

            Everything seemed to hit him harder than it ever should have, and Bolin knew it. He'd nearly cried of joy the first morning he woke up to recognize Opal sleeping on the bed beside him and couldn't explain why. He'd nearly cried of embarrassment the first time he saw Su, and recalled hazily how he had spent nearly two hours apologizing to her about pushing her down at police headquarters. Of course, he hadn't realized at the time how long he'd spent groveling. Opal had told him after the fact, which only served to embarrass him more. Even when he was alone in his room, he was often overcome by a strange and irrepressible sadness, particularly when he considered how many hours a day he spent laying idle and thoughtless on his bed.

            He remained generally confused, generally slow, and overwhelmingly tired, even after he'd settled into his room in the boy's dormitory on Air Temple Island.

            The fatigue racked him both mentally and physically. He slept often and intermittently, had dozed at the table at breakfast the morning following his release, napped most of the day away, and had to leave the dinner table early that evening to avoid humiliating himself again. No matter how much he slept, he still felt tired. And every time he woke he remembered the litany of problems with his body. Head trauma, check. Sprained knee, check. Dislocated shoulder, how could he forget? It seemed the thing was out of joint more often than it was in, but there was nothing the healers could do for it that wouldn't lay him up for weeks or months. It had come out in the bath, when he stretched, when he slept, and though he had certainly gotten used to the disgusting feeling of his bones grinding together, he knew he would never grow accustomed to the gut-wrenching pain. Given its finicky nature even while performing mundane tasks he dared not entertain the idea of earthbending, not seriously anyway, and that was the most depressing thought of all. The only bright side was that he'd gotten fairly adept at putting it back in on his own, but that seemed little consolation in the long run.

            Try as he might to pretend, his gloom did not go unnoticed. No one said anything to him about it, but he couldn't help but notice how unusually nice everyone was being. Jinora and Ikki had brought him half a dozen books to look through, and when he explained that he couldn't focus on the text they had offered to read with him. Just looking at the characters on the pages made his perpetual headache worse. Meelo and Rohan came in often to ask the kinds of ridiculous questions that only nine and four year old boys could think of, questions that they were likely too embarrassed to ask their father. Bolin entertained these stoically and vowed never to say a word to Tenzin. Asami stopped in daily when she wasn't occupied by Future Industries business, and brought food that more often than not went untouched thanks to his utterly diminished appetite. She didn't press for conversation, which Bolin appreciated, but she did insist that the lights in his room stay on, which both drained him and made the headache worse. Pema brought tea every afternoon and made certain his room remained tidy. Tenzin offered assistance in general, with dressing and cleaning and other mundane tasks, but Bolin had refused it all out of sheer stubbornness and had felt a little offended that anyone would think he needed help to do something as simple as putting on a shirt.

            But then his shoulder had come out while he was putting on his shirt. Though he managed to get it back in relatively quickly, he’d spent the next hour sitting half-dressed on the floor trying not to cry about it.

            It wasn't until Korra entered his room with Lin, Asami, and Opal behind her that he realized how little he had seen of her. As they situated themselves in chairs and on the bed he strained to remember if he had forgotten her visits or if she simply hadn't shown up at all. Opal had mentioned that Korra had stopped by the hospital once, but beyond that there seemed to be nothing.

            If he'd been able to think about it, he would have believed her to be avoiding him.

            "How are you feeling?" Opal asked as she curled up beside him. She pecked him gently on the cheek and smiled. "Better today?"

            Bolin had grown accustomed to shrugging with his left shoulder only. He didn't miss the look that the ladies exchanged.

            "I'm not going to beat around the bush, kid," Lin said. "We need to ask you some questions now that you can actually answer them."

            "If you really think I can answer them," Bolin replied. A cynicism had come to his voice lately, and he couldn't seem to shake it off. He couldn't even fake sincerity.

            "I want to know exactly what you remember," Lin continued, seemingly unfazed by his tone. "From the day you were attacked. With detail, if you can."

            It took a long time for the question to sink in, a truth Bolin recognized only by the change in Lin, Asami, and Korra's expressions. They hadn't spent enough time around him to modify their reactions, not the same way Opal had. At least she could stay straight-faced while he struggled with basic thought.

            Bolin didn't really know where to start. He remembered everything that had happened. He remembered the combustion bender, he remembered the fight, he remembered falling through the floor--or had the floor buckled beneath him? An uncertainty came over him, and instead of getting straight to the point, Bolin dumbly said, "I don't think I apologized to you for what I did."

            Lin's face screwed up. She must have thought he had missed the point entirely. He could see it in her eyes.

            "For when I blew up at you," Bolin clarified slowly. He had to make sure the words came out right. "When I...The night before..."

            "Don't worry about it," Lin said flatly. "I'm over it. Now what do you remember?"

            With a great sigh, Bolin folded his hands in his lap and fidgeted. He felt nervous. Lin was questioning him with purpose, as though he was in trouble. There was an urgency about her and he wanted to respond in kind. He didn't want to waste her time by taking too long to think about what words he wanted to use, but he couldn't will his mind to go any faster.

            "Well," he started. And then he stopped, having forgotten what he was going to say. He felt his forehead wrinkle, and he dropped his face into his hands. He felt Opal rub his back comfortingly. He breathed deep and tried again. "I didn't sleep," he said. "I couldn't sleep the night before. I..." he didn't want to admit that he had overheard Opal and Korra talking about him. He didn't want to talk about the nightmares he'd had.

            It seemed that the women read his pause as another lapse. He didn't fight the assumption. He'd probably stop in the middle of the next few sentences anyway.

            "I didn't sleep," Bolin repeated. "I couldn't sleep. I went to work and was tired, and the twins were mad at me." Now he paused out of confusion, and he squinted at the bedspread as he thought. Had they been angry with him? He certainly thought they had been. He remembered that they had been, but he couldn't tell if the memory was real or imagined.

            "It's okay," Opal murmured. "Take your time."

            It took a great effort to keep himself from getting angry. He didn't want to take his time. He didn't want Opal to patronize him. He wanted to talk like a normal human being, without repeating himself and forgetting what he was thinking before he could form the words. Such a simple explanation as this should never have warranted so much concentration

            "I left," Bolin said. An enormous sigh came out of him and took the mounting frustration with it. He kept his head in his hands. "I wanted to be by myself, so I left. And I went to work on my own. I didn't do a very good job." He shot a sheepish glance toward Lin, but she remained impassive. He continued, emboldened by her lack of reaction, but still he dropped his forehead back onto his hands. "I couldn't focus. I couldn't bend. I mean, I could bend. I could. But I couldn't do it well. I think. And...I was tired. And there was a man..."

            "Are you okay?"

            Bolin glanced at Opal. The look on her face told him that he'd not finished his thought, that he had trailed off again. It was a look of utmost concern, a look of worry. To Bolin, it was a look that said he hadn't recovered enough to suit her, or that she believed he wouldn't recover at all. He couldn't really tell. It was so hard to read people now. A familiar heaviness came over him, and the emotion welled back up. Again, he dropped his head into his hands and spent a long time fighting the sadness back down. He was going to finish this conversation. He was determined to finish it.

            "At lunch," Bolin said. "I didn't leave. I wanted to sleep, so I sat down and tried to sleep. I woke up and heard the sound of combustion. You know the sound," he looked to Lin, and she nodded. Head back down, he continued. "I heard the sound and panicked. And I ran but there wasn't anywhere to go. And I tried to fight back but I couldn't hit anything. There wasn't anything to bend on the roof. I was a sitting turtleduck. And I was tired, so I couldn't hit anything. It was pitiful. I guess he wasn't tired. He hit me plenty."

            "Did he say anything to you?" Korra said, and the sound of her voice startled him. He hadn't heard her speak in days, had forgotten her voice entirely. He'd barely seen her at all.

            "No," Bolin said directly. "He didn't say a word. Just...Bent at me. He won the fight, obviously. I fell down. I think I hurt my knee before I fell down. I couldn't get up because it hurt so bad. But then I fell down. I don't remember exactly _how_ I fell down. But I remember I fell down, and I tried to catch myself but I couldn't connect. I couldn't ground myself, I mean, so I couldn't..." He paused again. A lump had developed in his throat, and he felt very hot around his ears and neck. He couldn't tell if it was sadness or embarrassment. The emotions felt so similar.

            "I know how earthbending works," Lin said. "You don't have to explain yourself to me."

            The words had come out with little inflection, but they comforted Bolin all the same. He continued.

            "I fell down. It sounded like the whole world was caving in on top of me, and that's the last thing I remember of that day. The rest is all," he struggled for the word, "blurry, I guess. I thought everything after that was a dream, or I didn't know it was real, anyway. I'd still think it was a dream if you hadn't told me that he showed up in my room. But I woke up, I must've been in the hospital, but I woke up and didn't know where I was. I couldn't really see. It was dark, you know, and my eyes..." He waved his hand absently in front of his face, as though it would explain what he meant. "Everything hurt. And there was a man. The combustion bender. He was in the room, and he said that I shouldn't have woke up. Well, I don't remember exactly what he said, but it was something like that. Close enough. But he said that, and I got scared. I mean, I was scared anyway because I didn't know where I was or what was going on, but I got more scared. I didn't know what was going on, I think I was pretty much brain dead. I think I'm _still_ pretty much brain dead..." He sighed again. "He said that I was stubborn, I remember that, and something about being _touched by fire_." He trailed off lamely.

            "You don't remember anything after that?" Asami prompted.

            Bolin shook his head.

            "You don't remember throwing anything? Don't remember me setting your arm?" Lin asked.

            Again, Bolin shook his head. He'd thought it had all been a dream, and even then the only thing he could hold on to was looking at Lin, panicked, as she held his arm. He'd imagined that Su had covered his eyes. "I don't remember anything else between then and a couple days ago. Not really, anyway."

            The silence following his words lasted too long. It became awkward, but then Lin stood and planted her hands firmly on her hips. "That'll do well enough," Lin said. "You think you could identify him if you had to?"

            "Probably."

            "Good." Lin made to leave the room in a hurry.

            "Wait a minute," Bolin said before he'd had the chance to think about it. Lin stopped and looked back, confused. "Aren't you going to tell me the rest? Aren't you going to tell me what happened? What _actually_ happened?"

            "We've already told you," Opal said kindly. "You knocked the combustion bender out and then fainted. That's really all there was."

            Bolin looked down. He felt defeated. He should have remembered that conversation, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't.

            "You get better soon," Lin said. "I'm counting on it. Korra, Opal, Asami, we should go and let him rest."

            It sounded to Bolin like there was some hidden meaning behind the words, like she meant more than what she was saying. But he couldn't articulate that. He could barely even think it. He got caught on the thought for a while, so hung up that he didn't notice the kiss Opal planted on his cheek or that she had gotten up to leave. Then the thought dislodged and rushed away, and an entirely new realization struck him. The dreams. He remembered the nightmares. He'd just been thinking about them five minutes ago.

            "Wait," he said again, and now when Lin rounded she looked mildly angry. Though it was a restrained anger, it made Bolin stammer. "I wondered... Um... I... I need to talk to Korra."

            "I'll meet you three back at headquarters," Lin said brusquely.

            "I need to talk to Korra alone," Bolin repeated. He'd meant the addition to come out confidently, but it hadn't worked. He'd sounded sheepish, almost afraid, and the involuntary pause his brain had inserted into the middle of the sentence had certainly not helped. He added lamely, "If that's okay."

            Opal and Asami exchanged an uncertain glance and Opal nodded. Then they left with Lin, and Korra stood alone by the door. The expression that remained on her face made it seem like she was about to be sick. As soon as the door closed her posture stiffened, she crossed her arms, and she didn't come back into the room or even indicate that she meant to. Instead, she said rigidly, "What's up?"

            "Can we take a walk?" Bolin asked, and he got slowly to his feet without waiting for a reply. Even moving around was difficult. "It might take a while for me to say what I need to say, and I need to get out of this room."

            "Yeah," Korra said. She didn't move to help him. Instead, as he approached her she said again, "What's up?"

            It seemed as though she wanted to be rid of him.

            "Look," Bolin said flatly, with perhaps too much heat in his tone, "if this is a bad time for you I can go lay back down and we can do this later. But you and I need to talk... Or I need to talk to you... Or..." he paused, the confusion coming back. The words hadn't come out right, had come out all jumbled. Hadn't they? The meaning would be lost. It might already have been lost. Had he used the right words at all? He sighed and started over again. "I need to talk to you. It's important, or else I wouldn't have asked."

            Korra opened the door, and though her posture relaxed a bit she still wore the sick expression. Bolin made no mention of it. He couldn't have made any meaning out of it anyway.

            They exited the room and Korra greeted the two White Lotus sentries outside Bolin's door--sentries that Bolin had forgotten were even there--and walked for a while. He followed Korra's lead and didn't pay attention to where they were going. He couldn't navigate and think of the words he wanted to say at the same time. It was entirely too much effort. He felt drained just being on his feet, never mind trying to walk and think and talk at the same time.

            If he'd been able to recognize it, he might have noticed the conspicuous distance Korra kept between them.

            Somehow they ended up at the pavilion where Korra took her daily meditation, a platform that Bolin very rarely visited at all. With nowhere else to go, Korra leaned against the redwood fencing and stared out at Aang's statue across the bay. She wouldn't make eye contact, and Bolin couldn't tell why.

            "Look," he said, and he assumed much the same posture as her: Arms crossed, half his weight against the fencing, "I..." he stopped. He felt so tired. The emotion was coming back. Why was it coming back? Why couldn't he control it? Instead of saying whatever it was that he had meant to say, he gave a great groan of frustration, propped his elbows on the railing, and dropped his head into his hands. It seemed that he'd spent more time in that position over the last few days than the rest of his life combined.

            "It's that bad, huh?" Korra asked, and when Bolin glanced at her he noted with some relief that she had finally made eye contact. He wished she didn't look so distressed, so worried, but at least she was looking at him. It was a start. "Is it? That bad?" She repeated.

            Bolin shook his head, dropped it back into his hands. He didn't know what else to do. "It's bad. I try to think, and then I stop, and then whatever it was that I was about to say is completely gone, and..." his brain inserted another involuntary pause, and this time he recognized it. He took a deep breath and continued. "And I keep doing _that_ and I can't stop it and everyone thinks I'm stupid. I'm tired. I'm tired of being tired. All my body wants to do is lie around and sleep, but all I want to do is get up and move around. I spent what--four days?--completely bedridden and now that I'm free it's like I'm more trapped than ever."

            "It was seven," Korra corrected gently. "You were there for seven days and eight nights."

            "You make it sound like a vacation. I hated it. Or I hated what I remember of it."

            When he looked at her, Korra had again taken to gazing out over the bay. He stared out as well, and for a few minutes he forgot why he'd even walked with her to begin with. But then he remembered the dreams and spent a while trying to decide how he wanted to say what he needed to say.

            "I need to talk to you," he said somewhat gravely. He spoke slowly, a deliberateness to every word. He was determined to get through it all without another lapse. "I already said that. Look, I had this dream. While I was laid up..."

            Korra went all rigid again, bristled like a spooked deerdog. She looked a bit like she was going to throw up.

            "Are you okay?"

            Korra nodded, but she didn't say anything and didn't move a muscle. She just kept looking out at the statue, her eyes opened a touch wider than usual.

            "Can we sit? This might be easier if we sit. Come on." Bolin gently put his arm around Korra's shoulders and drew her away from the fence. He could feel the tenseness in her muscles, the shortness of her breath. It concerned him, but he couldn't afford to lose focus now. He had to stay on point before he lost the thoughts completely.

            Korra sat heavily beneath the covered pavilion and with effort Bolin sat, too, and they faced each other in the quiet for a while. Korra stared at her boots, and Bolin watched her curiously, trying as hard as he could to read her expression. She'd gone pale.

            "Are you sick?" Bolin asked dumbly. It was the only thing he could imagine that made sense. It would explain why she hadn't come to visit him more often. It would explain how she looked at this very moment. "Is that it?"

            Korra looked at him, startled, and then nodded. "Yeah. That's it," she said nervously, and she crossed her arms and rubbed at her upper arms. "I just don't feel very well."

            "Is there something I can do?"

            "We can skip this conversation, if you want," she said. She sounded slightly hopeful, and Bolin didn't understand why. Why would she have agreed to come out with him if she didn't want to? Why would she have agreed to have the conversation only to change her mind at the last minute?

            "I'm sorry," Bolin said, "but I really need to say this while I've got it in my head." He paused and Korra gave him a pleading look, but he pressed on all the same. "I had this dream while I was in the hospital. Well, and besides then, but I had this dream. I lost control of my bending."

            " _What?_ "

            The shift in Korra's posture and tone had come so suddenly that Bolin's thoughts stopped dead in his brain. Where thirty seconds ago she had looked ready to cry, she had suddenly perked up. She looked extremely hopeful, almost relieved, as though he had lifted some enormous weight off of her. She seemed to realize that she had jarred him, and she relaxed.

            "I had this dream," Bolin started over, more tentative this time, and he kept his eyes locked on Korra. Confusion or not, he was going to finish. "I lost control of my bending. I mean, I did actually lose it--control--you know that and I know that, when I blew up at Lin and Su, and I'm so ashamed of _that_ that I wish I could die." He paused, startled. Those weren't words he had ever meant to say. They weren't words he'd ever said before. He'd definitely never thought them before. With a great breath, he pressed on. "I dreamed that I couldn't control my bending and I hurt a lot of people. Badly. Really badly. I mean, I've had messed up dreams before but I've never had something that... Messy... Or scary... Or violent."

            Korra just watched him, and Bolin felt self-conscious.

            "I'm not supposed to earthbend. You know, my shoulder and all, they told me I'm not supposed to. But I..." He paused, the stupid feeling growing stronger. He looked down. "I'm really afraid. I don't want to fall out of rhythm. I don't want to lose control. I don't want to repeat what I did to Lin and Su. I don't want what happened in my dream to happen for real."

            "What happened?"

            "Have you ever killed someone with your bending?" The words had come out before Bolin could stop them. He hadn't even thought to say them and he regretted it immediately. He stammered nervously but nothing coherent would come to him.

            "I suppose, once," Korra replied softly. The air of concern about her had changed just slightly. It was gentler, more genuine, maybe. It didn't seem to be inward anymore. Now it was aimed at him. "My uncle died at Harmonic Convergence, but I don't know if that was really bending or not, I don't know he was even still alive in there. I don't know if I'm the one that did it. Is that what happened in your dream? You killed people?"

            Bolin nodded. "I lavabent. It..." He paused. He couldn't think of the word. "It burned them. They just sunk down in it and I couldn't stop it. I couldn't control it. They just melted into it like..."

            "Who?" Korra asked. Bolin didn't mind the interruption. "Who do you mean by _they_?"

            "I don't know who they were. Just...people. It was like I was in Ba Sing Se and the explosion happened and for some reason everything turned to lava and the people that were running around couldn't get out of it and..."

            "Slow down."

            "I'm afraid, Korra. You're the Avatar... And you're my friend, but you're the Avatar, too, and I know this is stuff that you're supposed to help with..."

            "Have you ever tried meditating?"

            "No. I don't know how."

            "Well, you could try that," Korra said. "It's a good way to process those kinds of thoughts."

            "I want..." Bolin started, but then he stopped. It was a deliberate pause. An idea had come to him, but it sounded stupid even in his brain.

            "What?"

            "You're the Avatar," Bolin said again, trying to force the thought out, "but I already said that. And it's stupid for me to keep repeating it. But you're the Avatar." Another cry of frustration. The nerves had caught up to him. He couldn't get past it. He was hung up again.

            "Slow. Down," Korra said again. She emphasized each word, commanding yet tender. "Just slow down and breathe."

            Bolin breathed and dropped his head back into his hands. Maybe he could say the words if he wasn't looking at her. The heat crept back into his face as he stared at the ground. All of this was so embarrassing.

            "Now," Korra said, "what are you trying to say?"

            "I know that the Avatar is the one who's supposed to, you know, master all the elements and all. And you've done that." Bolin took another deep breath. He was going to get through this. "Obviously. But I... I guess I never thought about how powerful lavabending was before. I took it for granted and didn't realize how...Dangerous...It was...Especially if I can't control it very well, and I don't feel like I can. I can't use it..." Another lapse. "I've never used it very effectively. There's a lot more I feel like I could be doing, and in better ways, is what I'm trying to say. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I want you... I want you to teach me how to... How to waterbend."

            He didn't look up, but he could feel Korra staring at him. His whole explanation had come out a garbled mess of rushed words and stammering. 

            "You're an earthbender," she said plainly.

            "I know," Bolin replied, frustrated again. "That's not what I meant. What I meant is that water is a liquid...And lava is...Well, a liquid, kind of. A thick liquid, anyway. And I want to learn to control it better. So it seems like it would be a good idea to learn how to...Liquid bend." He paused and read some confusion in Korra's expression. "I mean, I know that not everything will translate very well, and I won't be able to do some of the stuff, but maybe if I learn the forms and practice I'll be able to...Adapt."

            "You're being serious."

            "I'm being serious."

            Bolin dared not look at her. He felt too ashamed. But Korra's tone changed again, and the confusion seemed to have gone out of her voice. "It's not _that_ crazy of an idea. But if you really want to do it, we need to do it right. Are you sure you're up for it? The healers said you weren't supposed to earthbend until your arm had healed."

            "It's not really earthbending, is it?"

            "Then tomorrow morning you need to be out here at sunrise, at this very spot," Korra said authoritatively, and she stood. "We'll have to be quiet, and we'll have to find a spot away from here to work. Tenzin isn't going to be happy if he finds out you're bending so soon. And you need to know that I'm not going to take it easy on you."

            "That's fine," Bolin said, and another wave of embarrassment came on. "But can you help me stand up?"

            Korra complied. "Okay. I might take it a little easy on you."

  



	17. A Slow Recovery

            For Korra, everything about the next few days was surprising. The time since Bolin had left the hospital had numbed the nervousness she felt around him, but the realization that he seemed to have forgotten all about what had happened between them quelled it almost entirely. The flood of relief she felt when he asked her to teach him waterbending had caused an elation so complete that it seemed it would never go away. For the first time, she felt comfortable enough to establish a daily routine that placed her alone with him for most of the morning: Meditation at the pavilion, physical training somewhere far away from the pavilion, sometimes lunch, then go their separate ways. Only the tiniest shred of nervousness remained.

            For the first few days, Korra focused on teaching Bolin meditation techniques that she hoped would strengthen his mind. For a while he had difficulty just sitting still, let alone focusing enough to get any benefit from the effort, and seemed to just fall asleep. Even so, he sat and tried.

            "You're just too tense," Korra said on the third morning. She had made the decision to forego her own meditation to try and help make his more effective. She hadn't told him that she was going to watch him. She knew that he wouldn't be wild about the idea. "Right there." She poked him in the forehead, just above his left eyebrow. "And right there." Gentler, she poked his right shoulder, and he jerked it away from her.

            He opened one eye and gave her a doubtful look. "You're supposed to be doing this, too, aren't you?"

            "I've had enough practice," Korra replied. "Now close your eyes and breathe."

            He closed his eyes, but didn't relax. "What exactly am I supposed to be thinking about?"

            "You're not supposed to be _thinking_ at all," Korra replied. "You just sit, and you..." She didn't know how to explain it. She'd never had to explain it before. "Tenzin always said that you sit and _attune yourself to the elements around you_ but I never really got what that meant."

            "Well, I've only got one element."

            "Then focus on that."

            He did.

            In all other matters of bending, Bolin learned quickly, or at least quicker than Korra would have imagined considering the trouble he had with general living. Within two days he could follow along with the basic waterbending forms in real time. On the fourth day, they actually began to bend, though little came of the effort. Bolin was scarcely strong enough to bring any earth from the ground, let alone heat and compress it enough to create free-flowing lava. So, they settled on building back strength and continuing to learn the forms.

            Korra reported his progress to Lin and Asami, who believed that she was simply working with him to rehabilitate after so long abed. She didn't want them to know exactly what they were doing. She didn't want to embarrass herself or Bolin if it didn't work out. All she said was that the meditation seemed to be strengthening his mind and that he was still too nervous about his shoulder to give bending his full effort. Going to visit the combustion bender would have to wait.

            Then, on the eighth day of their training, something altogether strange happened.

            Halfway through their normally silent meditation, Bolin looked up and announced, quite confidently, that Asami was there. The sound of his voice startled Korra, and by the time she had recovered enough to correct him he'd gotten to his feet and walked off toward the stairs. Asami wasn't there, and for a moment Korra wondered if the progress she'd been seeing in his mental state wasn't as good as she thought. But then Asami came strolling up the stairs with a small, gift-wrapped box in her hands, and looked slightly confused to see Bolin standing there waiting for her.

            The two of them exchanged happy hellos, walked back to the pavilion and sat, and Korra looked between them confusedly.

            "What was that all about?" Korra said to Bolin, and he shrugged. Then Korra looked to Asami and said, "Did you tell him you were coming by?"

            Asami shook her head. "No, I really hadn't planned to stop in until this afternoon. I didn't think I'd get this done, but I stayed up late to finish it." She wiggled the box a bit in gesture.

            "What is it?" Korra asked.

            Asami thrust the box toward Bolin with an enormous smile. "Korra told me you've been trying to bend and I wanted to try to help," she explained. "As much as I can help, anyway, being a nonbender."

            Bolin took a few moments to look between Asami and the box, seemingly more confused than he was surprised. The moments of complete confusion had come less frequently of late, but the look on his face told Korra in no uncertain terms that he hadn't fully recovered. Not nearly.

            "What is it?" He asked.

            "Open it, silly," Asami replied.

            Bolin opened it delicately, as though he was afraid he would break whatever was inside. As he stared into the box the confusion on his face deepened until he pulled out a bundle of what looked to Korra like limp, olive green straps. "I repeat myself, on purpose this time," Bolin said, oddly self-aware. He leaned forward a bit, squinting. He seemed to be working extremely hard to figure it out. "What... Is it?"

            But Asami beamed and took the device delicately out of Bolin's hands, untangling it from itself, and she held it aloft for both Bolin and Korra to see clearly. Now it had been laid out plain, it looked to Korra like a weird cross between a shirt and a belt.

            "It's a shoulder brace!" Asami declared happily. "See, it's got plates in it," she tapped her fingers against flat, cloth-covered panels on its front and rear, "to protect and hold your arm in place. I made them from platinum so you don't have to worry about any metalbending putting you at a disadvantage, but they're thin, so they can break. Try to avoid hitting them too hard. They can be removed as your shoulder heals up. And then it's got this strap that goes around your chest and back to adjust for fitting, see? I've been working on it for a few days, but I was getting help from the healers Lin was working with and they were pretty busy with..."

            Korra shot Asami a dangerous look, and Asami shut up at once, her eyes wide with realization. It wouldn't do to have her spilling information before they were ready.

            But Bolin hadn't seemed to notice the slip. He was too caught up trying to understand what Asami had said. She must have spoken too fast, too excitedly, for him to follow. He presently stared at the contraption in Asami's hands. He looked skeptical. "So... How, exactly?"

            "It might take a minute," Asami said. She grabbed Bolin somewhat roughly by the left arm and pulled him toward her. He moved reluctantly. "I tried it on myself, but obviously, I couldn't fit it for you because I don't know your measurements. Let me show you... Turn this way... I'm not going to hurt you! Come on. Good. Put your arm through here."

            Asami began to assemble the device about Bolin's arm while his face turned a deepening shade of red. She pulled what Korra now recognized as a sleeve up to the top of his arm, situated the plates front and back, and clipped them delicately into place. She drew the longer band around his chest and back, and when she wrapped her arms around him to secure it, her face touched his and he went even redder. By the time Asami had finished, Bolin had gone the color of an overripe lychee fruit.

            "See?" Asami said proudly. "Now, I'm going to tighten it up so don't flinch, okay?"

            Bolin didn't say a word and didn't move a muscle except to watch what she was doing.

            Again, Asami began to mess with the clips, cinching the band carefully up and adjusting the plates as she did. The more she messed with the device the more Korra understood its purpose, and when Asami finally pulled away it did indeed look as the right half of a shirt complete with partial sleeve. It covered only part of his chest, though, and only one strap wrapped around his ribs, running diagonally beneath his left arm.

            "How does it feel?" Asami asked gleefully. "It looks like it fits pretty well."

            "It's tight," Bolin replied. He rolled his shoulder absently, looking uncomfortable in every way. "Is it supposed to be so tight?"

            "Yes," Asami said, and she looked at Bolin severely. She reached out and pulled the plates away from his neck a bit, and then leaned back again. "It's supposed to be tight. It'll loosen up a little bit as you break in the fabric, but those plates are going to hold your shoulder in place. If it's not tight enough it won't work."

            "Oh. Thanks?"

            "I tried to make it thin enough that you can wear it under your clothes, it's not really meant to be worn over such a thick jacket, but I didn't figure you wanted to strip out here in the open." Asami paused, but Bolin didn't respond. He'd gone red again. "You'll have to adjust the fit later. I suppose the only thing left to do is see if it actually works."

            Korra thought that Asami sounded a little too excited to be saying that. But if anyone was to be confident in the success of their work, it was Asami, and rightfully so.

            "You... Want me to bend? Right here and now?" Bolin asked doubtfully.

            "Well, you've been working on it, haven't you?" Asami asked.

            Korra looked to Bolin, and Bolin looked to her. She shrugged, and he gave her a pleading look, as though he didn't want to answer the question himself. So Korra cleared her throat and explained. "He hasn't really gotten back to it yet," she said. "Not all the way, anyhow. We've been taking it slow."

            Asami looked crestfallen and Bolin watched her. Korra watched him. His expression underwent a slow change, from confusion, to realization, to confusion again, as if he'd worked out some deep meaning but hadn't understood it. Then Bolin took on a guilty look, heaved an enormous sigh, and said, "Come on, Korra. Just don't hit me too hard."

            He got up with effort and spent the next few moments flexing and rolling and stretching his right arm delicately as he did most days before they began their physical labor. By the time Korra had gotten to her feet his motions seemed almost natural, if a little bit slow.

            "You look better," Asami said happily. "Well, better than the last time I saw you try to move around."

            "You mean when I tried to go to the bathroom and Lin had to pick me up off the floor?"

            "That would be the time."

            Bolin shrugged again. "I may have been disobeying rest orders in my room before bed the last few nights, which, now that I said it sounds terrible, and I didn't mean it like that." He paused and looked sheepishly at the ground. "I mean that I've been trying to work a little, stretching and stuff. Don't know that it's been helping."

            "Well, you do look better," Asami insisted, then added, "and your sentences are really good, too."

            It was clear to Korra that Asami had meant the words to come out as encouragement, but Bolin's reaction indicated he'd taken it otherwise. He jammed his hands in his pockets and marched silently across the pavilion with his eyes on the ground and the slightest sag in his posture. Then, a formidable distance away, he turned and looked to Korra expectantly.

            Uncertainly, Korra took her stance. Last time she'd earthbent at Bolin she'd split his arm, but she supposed that that had happened when he didn't have bending at all. Now he had it again, at least weakly, so he should be able to block at the very least, even if he only used his good arm. With this in mind, she drew a modestly-sized chunk of rock from the ground, and lobbed it halfheartedly across the way.

            Bolin swatted it aside, notably with his right forearm. "Don't mock me," he said spitefully. "I'm out of shape, not crippled."

            "You sure?"

            "If we're going to test this thing out we should probably, you know, _test it out_." The bitterness had crept back into his voice in full, and now that she thought on the matter, the tone had been with him almost every hour of every day. It usually only went away when he was trying to think or when he was confused. Korra wondered if he even knew it was there.

            "Okay then," Korra said. "You first."

            "No," Bolin replied hotly. "You go first, and don't hold back this time." Then his voice diminished slightly, more sarcastic than spiteful. "What's the worst thing that could happen? My arm comes out? Oh no, _that's_ never happened before."

            Korra couldn't really refute him, and Bolin didn't seem to be terribly worried. Besides, she reasoned, if he could hold up to her maybe he would be ready to go visit with the combustion bender. "Okay then," she said, and then began in earnest.

            She kicked up a significantly larger hunk of rock and threw it more forcefully at him, then a second, then a third in rapid succession. Bolin deflected the first, left-handed, ducked beneath the second, and caught the third straight on and launched it back, right-handed. It came faster than Korra expected, and she staggered as it hit her middle.

            Bolin stood with his arms crossed, eyebrow raised. It was the most pretentious look she'd ever seen on him, a look that straddled the border between disbelief and arrogance. "Really? That's it?" Sarcasm again. Korra didn't like the way the tone fit him.

            But then he went on the offensive, and again Korra was surprised. She marked a difference in the way he bent the earth and wasn't sure if it was a result of his practice in lavabending, because of the time he'd spent off his feet, or if it was drawn of something else entirely. It had been a long, long time since last they sparred.

            The earth he threw at her was smaller of size but quicker in speed, and it reminded Korra powerfully of his pro-bending style. It was extraordinarily efficient. But there was also a fluidity in his motion that hadn't been there prior. Generally earthbending relied on very independent movements, deliberate actions that rarely fit together nicely. Combinations in the element didn't come easily to those who hadn't yet mastered the form. But Bolin didn't so much as pause between the motions even with his substantial injuries: He pulled the earth from the ground and drove it toward her with graceful sweeps of the arms, blocked her counter with a wall of his own, sent the top half of it throttling toward her with a mighty kick.

            "What do you think you're doing?"

            They stopped dead, and all that could be heard was the sound of rocks cracking apart as they fell to the ground. Korra looked toward the stairs, where Tenzin stood glaring at them.

            "Are you completely out of your minds?" Tenzin scolded.

            "Well," Bolin jeered, "if you want to be real technical about it, yeah." His tone remained the same as it had when he was talking to her, if not more severe. It was all venom and attitude. Even his posture had turned aggressive. "What with, you know, the head trauma and all."

            Korra's stomach jumped to her throat. She could see Tenzin's anger swelling. His face had gone the lightest shade of pink.

            "You," Tenzin ordered, pointing angrily at Bolin, "to your room. Now."

            "Whatever."

            Korra thought Tenzin would explode. While she had mouthed off to him before, she had never been quite so disrespectful about it, and she could fairly well guarantee that none of his own children ever had. He stammered, flabbergasted, as Bolin jammed his hands back into his pockets and strode round-shouldered past him down the stairs without another word. Once he disappeared, Tenzin turned back around and Korra cowered. She'd never seen him so animated.

            "And you two!" He cried, more exasperated now than he seemed angry. "I expected better out of you!"

            "It was my fault," Asami explained. She seemed unmoved by Tenzin's reaction. "Don't blame them, it was my suggestion."

            "What were you thinking?" Tenzin demanded. He seemed unable to come up with strong enough words. "You know--"

            Asami held up her hands in surrender. "I know," she said placidly. "I know. Bed rest and sleep." Tenzin seemed to relax as she said it. "But you should know that he's not going to stay in bed, no matter what we do, and I know you've seen how sad he's been. Or angry. Or whatever _that_ just was. And it seems like every time he tries to do something his shoulder comes out--he thinks he's hiding it but I know better. He's favoring his left side too much for the right to be healing. So, I made him a brace and I wanted him to see how it worked."

            Tenzin deflated just a bit. "Oh," he said feebly, and he looked between Korra and Asami as though waiting for one of them to elaborate. But then he swelled again and added, a very fatherly tone to his voice, "But he's still not supposed to be bending!"

            Korra sighed. "Okay," she said. "But when he hurts himself because he's trying to do too much on his own too fast, don't come crying to me. Come on, Asami."

            She had no real intention of stopping the training.

            Asami collected the now empty box from beneath the pavilion, and the two made their way wordlessly back to Korra's room. Korra flopped onto her bed and folded her arms behind her head, staring somewhat irately at the ceiling.

            "Well," Asami said dryly, and she tossed the empty box aside, "he was going to find out eventually."

            Korra blew a sigh. "Yeah. He was. But I still expected him to be a little more understanding about it."

            Asami sat heavily on the bed. "He's just worried." The frustration seemed to have gone out of her. "But you know, Bolin seems better. Well, stronger, I mean. You've been spending a lot of time together lately, right? A few hours every morning?"

            For some reason, the nervousness came back to her. She _had_ been spending a lot of time with Bolin, a truth she would've never considered possible given how much effort she had previously put into avoiding him. "Yeah," Korra said slowly, her mind drifting toward thoughts of the night that had caused her so much apprehension. "I suppose we have."

            "Have you noticed any change?"

            Change? Korra thought. A lot had changed. True she wasn't quite as nervous around him anymore, not now he'd made it clear that he didn't remember, but she couldn't look at him the same way as she had before. There was no more casualness between them, at least not on her end. Whether she wanted to admit it, every interaction she'd had with him had been extremely deliberate. No accidental brushing of the arms, no bumping or stumbling into each other. In fact, now that she thought on it, Korra could count on one hand the number of times she had touched him at all: Exactly four. She had poked him twice when encouraging him to relax during meditation, to help him feel the tension in his body. Once, before he had learned the waterbending forms on his own, she had manually adjusted the position of his arms as his right had been sagging just slightly. The final time, she'd had to help him set his shoulder, and she'd been so terrified during that ordeal that she could barely even remember it.

            "Korra?"

            Korra startled, sat up, and looked to Asami. She hoped that Asami hadn't seen her reaction, hadn't seen her thinking so hard, but Asami's eyes were narrow and curious.

            "Yeah," Korra said at once, and again her voice sounded a touch too bright for her liking. "There's been change. He's a lot better than he was the first day. He can actually say what he thinks now, even if he still thinks slow."

            Asami sighed and folded her legs on the bed, facing Korra fully now. "He seemed a lot more confident in his movement. Stronger, maybe. But his attitude could use some serious polishing."

            Korra couldn't disagree. It had been a few days since the last time Bolin had wholeheartedly attempted earthbending, and there had been a marked improvement in his strength. The sore spot on her stomach where he'd hit her was a testament to that. The combination of their training together and his working alone had clearly had an impact. The only thing that hadn't improved, just as Asami had said, was his attitude, which oscillated between perfectly normal and uncharacteristically snide. There was no predicting when it would change or what would trigger it.

            Korra had hoped that meditating with him would even him out a bit, but to her knowledge it hadn't had any real, meaningful impact. Yes, he was confused less often, had fewer lapses in speech, and seemed generally more able to focus and articulate himself, but Korra imagined that such improvement was more the result of his sleeping some twelve or fourteen hours a day or more. But then again, he'd known Asami had arrived well before she had shown up. With a shake of her head, Korra dismissed the event as lucky coincidence. Nothing about their meditation would have allowed him to know that.

            "I think we should call Lin," Korra said at last, having come to a conclusion.

            "Why?"

            "I think we ought to go visit the combustion bender again."

            Asami made a face that let Korra know she didn't exactly agree. "I don't know," she said carefully. "I mean, Bolin's been irritable enough anyway, I don't know how he'll react if we tell him that he's going to go talk to the guy who literally tried to kill him. It's been a couple weeks, yeah, but I know he's not over it. There's no way he could be."

            "But isn't that a good thing?" Korra reasoned. "His mood? We don't want him to go in and have a pleasant conversation with the guy. We want him to go in there and scare the pants off him."

            Asami shrugged.

            "And his bending today was..." Korra paused and rubbed at her stomach again, trying to think of the best word. "Well, it was intense. I think if he got mad enough he could lavabend. It might even be easy."

            "And you don't think he'll be angry that we planned all this without telling him? If you think about it, we're basically using him as a tool for interrogation."

            "I don't see any other choice," Korra said slowly. She hadn't looked at it that way. The idea of having Bolin get the combustion bender to talk had been great, in theory, but Korra hadn't been thinking about how the interaction might impact him. As much as she wanted to distance herself from feeling _anything_ about Bolin, she couldn't help but feel guilty. "I guess we should tell him, then. That we want to take him. We've been keeping too many secrets anyway."

            "I'll let you do that," Asami said. "I almost let slip about Mako--or I guess _not_ Mako--earlier, and I wasn't even stressed out. I don't think I could hold it together if Bolin was to get mad at me and go off like he did on Tenzin." Then Asami stood and folded her arms. "I'll go get hold of Lin. Besides, I've got a few things I need to take care of at the office and I need to feed Pabu. I may as well go visit her while I'm in the city. I'll call you when I find out what she wants to do, and you can tell Bolin."

            Korra pushed herself to sit on the edge of the bed, and then she stood. "I think that's a good idea," she said. "I've seen him at his worst. I can handle it."

            There was no way Asami could've known the multiple meanings of that statement. How much worse could Bolin have been than that first night when he'd knocked the combustion bender out cold even while he, himself had been utterly out of touch with reality, in what must've been unfathomable pain and scared out of what little mind he had left? And Korra wasn't even sure that had been his worst. The more she thought about it, their night together had been worse than anything else she'd seen since arriving at the hospital that evening, at least from her perspective. He'd been so out of touch and so delirious that Korra had worried at the time that the damage would be permanent.

            "All right," Asami said. "I'm going to go talk to Lin. I'll let you know what she wants to do as soon as I can. It's still early; she may want to go today."

            Korra nodded, and Asami hugged her gently before disappearing out the door. When she was sure Asami had gone, Korra slumped back down onto the bed, slightly sad and slightly worried, and distinctly uncertain. She couldn't decide if it would be better to go talk to Bolin about the matter now, while he was already upset, or wait until he'd had some time to cool down a bit. The last thing she wanted to do was make his bad mood even worse. For a fraction of a second she considered going to speak to Tenzin about the matter, but decided that he was probably too disappointed in her to provide advice, and would only be more disappointed if he found out what they planned to do.

            Korra reclined on the bed and closed her eyes. She would wait a while, think about what to say, and hopefully by the time Asami contacted her, would have something in mind.

            By lunch, Korra was glad she had decided against talking to Tenzin. The tension was still there, and Bolin wasn't even at the table. Ten minutes into the meal a White Lotus sentry had entered in something of a huff and explained that Bolin had adamantly refused to come out to eat. Tenzin hadn't said a word, but Korra could tell he was angry.

            "I could take him something," said Jinora to Tenzin kindly. She must have misread the look on his face. "If you think it would help."

            Tenzin narrowed his eyes at his food, and Pema answered in his place. "You know, I think that'd be a good ide--"

            "No," Tenzin snapped. "If he wants to eat he needs to come out on his own."

            Jinora's face screwed up, and she looked between her siblings and Korra for some explanation. It seemed Tenzin hadn't said anything to them about what had made him so upset, and Korra wasn't about to tell.

            The rest of lunch passed in such tense silence that even Meelo didn't say anything, didn't even burp, and it seemed that the lot of them had taken to making sure their utensils didn't clink against the plates and that their cups didn't thump on the table. It was so quiet that Pema dropped her chopsticks, startled, when the door opened and an acolyte entered the room to inform Korra that she had received a phone call.

            Korra had never been so glad to get out of a room in her life.

            Predictably, the call had been from Asami, who reported with some apprehension that Lin did, indeed, want to go see the combustion bender that day, if Bolin felt up to the task. Asami also mentioned that Lin seemed to believe that Korra had already gotten Bolin's blessing on the matter, so she probably wouldn't be happy if he suddenly declined.

            With no small amount of apprehension, Korra made her way to the boys' dormitory.

            The White Lotus sentries outside Bolin’s door greeted her warmly, but their expressions fell when she asked if they could leave them in private for a while. She stumbled over her words a bit, awkwardly explaining that it wasn't that she thought they would eavesdrop, but that she needed to discuss some sensitive business, and that of all the people to leave Bolin alone with, she was probably the most trustworthy. The guards only agreed when she promised to come get them as soon as she was done, and even then, they only moved about ten feet down the corridor.

            It took a few breaths for her to feel ready enough to open the door. For some reason, whenever she touched the doorknob she felt sick, and she wasn't sure if it was because she feared how he would react to the news or because she would be alone with him again. Still, she cracked the door just slightly and poked her head inside.

            He was there on the bed atop the blankets, half dressed with his head at the foot and bare feet on his pillow, his knees up. He'd draped his right forearm over his eyes, his left hand resting idly on his middle. It was an altogether odd position to have fallen asleep, and Korra wondered if he'd meant to at all. He didn't move when Korra closed the door.

            She wasn't sure how to go about waking him up, or even that she should wake him up. Still, it would be far worse to have Lin _and_ Bolin angry with her, so she approached with every intention of giving him a gentle shake.

            But she couldn't bring herself to touch him. Even the thought of touching him set a familiar flutter in her stomach. Frustrated with herself, Korra stood there and stared down. Another flutter.

            The last time she'd looked at him like this had been in the hospital. The last time she'd looked at him like this he'd appeared all but dead. Though there was nothing dead about him this time, he still looked remarkably unhealthy. The difference seemed obvious now he'd shed his jacket, and Korra felt a little ashamed that she hadn't noticed it before. Through his sleeveless undershirt, she could see his collarbones sticking out from the tops of his shoulders and the faintest shadow of his sternum. The tendons in his neck had begun to show, the bones in his wrists were more pronounced.

            In all, he'd done a surprisingly good job covering it up. Korra hadn't known him to be such a good liar.

            She reached down and placed her hand gently on his arm. "Bolin?"

            He didn't move.

            With a sigh, Korra sat. She didn't want to shake him too hard. She didn't want to hurt him. At a loss, she patted him firmly on his right side. She cringed. She could feel his ribs. Still, she patted him again, called him again, and shook him as gently as she could. To her great relief, he moved.

            It was more of a twitch than a purposeful movement, but the sleepy "Wha?" he groaned was enough to let Korra know he'd waked.

            "Hey, sleepy," Korra said, and Bolin tipped his arm just enough above his eyes to look at her. She couldn't help but smile. "You got a minute?"

            He groaned again and rubbed at his face with both hands. It was at this point that Korra noted the ugly cut atop his right forearm, which, until now, had been resting against his forehead well out of her sight. It seemed wet.

            "You're bleeding!" Korra cried automatically, but Bolin held up his hand for silence, and Korra shut up, stunned. He pressed the heels of his hands back into his eyes. 

            "Air Temple Island," he murmured in the same low and sleepy voice he'd used the night he'd kissed her. The words were slow, calculated, and extremely deliberate. "Bedroom. Knee, head, shoulder. Pabu is with Asami." He repeated the litany twice more before heaving an enormous sigh and moving to sit up, but he stopped short, propped on his elbows, as though he had just noticed Korra sitting there. "Why are you in my room?"

            "Why are you bleeding?"

            Bolin looked at his forearm, brow raised, and then shrugged. "It stopped before I fell asleep."

            Korra glared at him. "What happened?" she said.

            "Bad block," Bolin replied simply. "Earlier today. Sloppy bending. I didn't notice until I got back here and by that time it didn't seem important."

            Without thinking, Korra wrenched his hand toward her to have a look, and he cried out in pain. When she released it, he fell back and clapped his left hand over his face. He lay that way for a while, and when it seemed he'd recovered, he dropped his hand limp above his head and continued staring at the ceiling.

            "Can we not just _grab_ next time?" he asked dryly. "Please? Because _pain_?"

            "I'm sorry," Korra replied, and she meant it. "I just wanted to look at it."

            "Why?" he snapped. "It's a cut. It's not like you haven't seen one before."

            It seemed he hadn't cooled off. Or she had made him angry again.

            "I'm sorry," she repeated.

            Bolin looked at her then, his expression less severe, and then he dropped his head back and closed his eyes again. "Why are you in my room?"

            He'd said the words as if she didn't belong there, as though it was off limits, like her presence was somehow an inconvenience. It had never been that way before.

            "I need to talk to you," Korra explained.

            With an enormous sigh, Bolin extended his left forearm and said, "Then help me up. Gently, this time."

            Korra helped him up.

            "I didn't mean to snap at you," he said. He propped his elbows on his knees and dropped his head low. He was fidgeting. "I really didn't. I hope you know that."

            "I know," Korra lied. "Are you okay?"

            "Still alive," Bolin replied, the cynical tone back again. "Hooray."

            "No, I'm being serious," Korra said. She grabbed at Bolin's wrist again but didn't pull. He looked up at her sharply, then dropped his gaze as though ashamed. "Are you okay?" Korra asked again. "Would you tell me if you weren't?"

            "What do you want to talk about?"

            Classic deflection, Korra thought. She wasn't sure if she should continue to press the matter. It was obvious he was lying, or at least he wasn’t coming straight out with the facts. He knew he wasn't okay. Any idiot could see that clearly just by looking at him. His posture, his tone, and everything else about him all pointed that way. He was just too stubborn to ask for help.

            "We need to go out," Korra said. There was business at hand, and she needed to get him ready as soon as she could. "Let me start over. While you were in the hospital, Lin, Asami, and I went to go see the combustion bender who attacked you. We wanted to question him to see if we could get any information out of him."

            Bolin looked up, curious now. "And?"

            "He wouldn't talk. Even when I threatened him with the Avatar state and everything."

            "Figures."

            "I'm going to be plain with you, okay? And I don't mean that as an insult so don't give me that look and don't get all mad at me about it. I'm not trying to offend you. We want you to come talk to him. To the combustion bender. And we want you to get some answers out of him."

            Bolin let out the most joyless laugh Korra had ever heard.

            "I'm being serious."

            "Yeah," he replied coldly. "What makes you think I'm going to be able to get anything out of him when _you_ couldn't? I mean, you're the Avatar. I've got nothing on you."

            "You've got lavabending."

            The icy laugh again.

            "I'm being serious!"

            Now Bolin looked offended, indignant, and all the sarcasm dropped from his voice. He sounded angry. "Are you crazy? I can't lavabend right now. I can barely stand up and you want me to go full out? What’s wrong with you?"

            "I saw you bend today," Korra reasoned, just as passionately. "You stood up on your own. You walked on your own. You moved well. And you’ve been that way for days. You're fine."

            He raised his eyebrows at her in disbelief, looked skeptical, as if he really thought she had gone crazy. Then his expression relaxed and he locked eyes with her. "No. I'm not."

            He spoke the words so evenly, so deadly serious, that Korra couldn't respond. It had been the first genuine thing he'd said to her in a long time, at least about his condition, and it told her all she needed to know. He really didn't think he could do it. He really wasn't okay.

            Korra sighed. "Look," she started firmly, "I know you can do it. You're the only shot we've got at getting any information out of him. We _need_ you. Trust me, if we could do this without you, we would, but..."

            "What the heck is that supposed to mean?" Angry again.

            "You _know_ what I mean." Korra felt herself growing angry now, too. He was being stubborn. He was too caught up in himself to listen to reason. "I need you to drop this _woe is me_ attitude and get with the program. We need your help! I'd love to ask someone else but we _can't_ ask someone else because you're the only person we know of that can..."

            "Woe is me attitude?" Bolin had lost all the inflection in his voice again. He parroted the words directly, as if he couldn't believe she had said them at all. Then he repeated them again, the heat coming back. "Woe is me attitude?"

            "All you've done for the last two weeks is sit in here and sulk and cry and complain!" Korra knew the words weren't true as soon as she'd said them. He hadn't complained once, not really, not unless someone hurt him, and even then, the complaints were no more than a groan or a yelp. She hadn't seen him cry. He'd been working hard to regain his strength. By all measures, he'd done everything he could to recover as fast as he could. By all measures, he'd probably been doing too much too soon. "All you've done for the last two weeks is sit in here and sleep and starve yourself and..."

            "I think you need to leave."

            Korra shut up at once. He'd said the words in a deadly way, with no expression on his face. He hadn't moved at all. He just stared at her as though waiting for her to go, like he was daring her to defy him.

            "Bolin..."

            " _Get out_."

            "No."

            He looked as though she'd water smacked him in the face. "What?"

            "No," Korra repeated firmly. "I'm not leaving unless you come with me. You can hate me and be mad at me or whatever you want, but you're coming with me if I have to drag you out of here by that stupid shoulder of yours."

            The silence lasted a long time. It lasted so long that Korra felt she might cry. He was just staring at her, and she could see very clearly the tendon flexing in his jaw.

            "What do you want me to do?" Still angry. Still cold. But progress.

            Very carefully, Korra explained. "Lin tried to question him. Her metalbenders tried to question him. I tried to question him. And all he would say was that he'd seen it all before. He's not afraid of our bending because he's seen it all before, and I believe him. I don't think there's a thing even I can do that would faze him at all."

            She had hoped that Bolin would understand the meaning without her spelling it out directly, but the angry stare he had leveled on her said that he hadn't.

            "We... I... I thought that you could do it. You're the only person we know of who can give the guy something new, something to be afraid of."

            "I'm tired of people being _afraid_ of me."

            "This guy tried to kill you," Korra pleaded. "This guy hurt you. He made you the way you are—"

            The look again. The look that said she'd spoken out of line.

            "You know what I mean! Please. I need you. We need you!"

            "When."

            "Lin wants to go today. As soon as possible."

            Bolin shook his head in angry disbelief, his eyes dropped low. "Thanks for the warning."

            But all the same, he pulled himself the rest of the way up, swung his legs over the side of the bed, and got to his feet. Korra watched him move about the room, collecting his clothes and shoes, too afraid to say anything to him about how frail he looked. She could see every muscle moving as he walked, bent, and stood, tossed his jacket on the table. It was a strange thing, she thought, how someone could look both sick and strong at the same time. He had always been broad, yes, but he'd also been just slightly thick. Not anymore. All of that was gone.

            If he cared that she was in the room he gave no indication. He pulled off his shirt left-handed and chucked it carelessly toward the corner nearest the door, walked to the table where he'd thrown his clothes, and grabbed a fresh undershirt. She didn't miss the slightly pained grunt when he pulled it over his head.

            And then he was glaring at her again, shirt half on, and Korra felt her face grow hot.

            "What are you staring at?" he snapped, then threw his arms wide in exasperation. "Something else you want to point out? Something else you want to insult?"

            "Bolin..."

            He pulled his shirt down and turned away without another word, grabbed the brace Asami had made for him from the table. Then, as coldly as ever, he said, "I need help."

            Korra dared not argue. She was on her feet at once. She didn't need to be asked to know what he needed. But she wasn't sure exactly how to adjust the fit, either.

            "It really was nice of Asami to make this for you," she said sheepishly as she messed with the device. "I didn't know she..."

            "Stop. Just _stop_."

            Again, Korra shut up and continued to adjust the straps as gently as she possibly could. Then, when she had regained some of her courage, she asked, "Is that okay?"

            Bolin rolled his shoulder, flexed it a bit, and Korra watched. "Good enough," he said, and he grabbed his jacket from the table, put it on carefully, and zipped it up. Then he sat, pulled on his shoes, and once it seemed he was all dressed he rubbed at his face with his hands again. He sat that way for a while, all tense and quiet.

            Korra wanted to ask if he was okay, but didn't want to upset him further. She wanted to help, but didn't know what to do.

            But then Bolin was on his feet again, and though the anger was still plain on his face he seemed to have relaxed a bit. He stood still, staring at the floor, and drew a few breaths. Then, without a word, he hugged her.

            Korra tensed immediately. She held her breath and squinted. It was the same as it had been, his arm around her, his hand on the back of her head. He was so warm. It felt the same. It felt electric.

            "Listen," he whispered, and she could hear the strain in his voice. "I'm sorry. I really am. But I'm _angry_ at you. I'm constantly angry with everyone, even myself, and I don't know why. But right now, I'm angry with you, and I don't want you to look down on me for it.” He sighed heavily and paused. “You asked me earlier if I'm okay, and I'm not. I'm really not, not at all. Maybe I _have_ been in here sulking and starving and crying, but I'm doing it because I don't want to snap at anyone again the way I just snapped at you or the way I snapped at Tenzin this morning. I know you're all just trying to help…And I try to fake normal as well as I can but I get tired. I can't cover it up all the time. I love you, Korra, and you're one of the best friends I've ever had, but..." He stopped, and Korra knew it wasn't another lapse. It wasn't that he had forgotten what he was going to say. He was trying to find the right words. "I need time. And I need space. And I need all of you to get off my back about it… And I need you to understand that."

            She nodded into his chest. A lump of sadness had come to her throat.

            "I heard you and Opal," he continued, and though the quality of his voice was just slightly stronger, the confusion seemed to have returned. He sounded uncertain, like he was concentrating too hard on what words to use. "On the night before I was attacked. I heard you talking about me, and I heard you both say how scared you were of me, and how you worried that I would hurt you. I remember that really clearly, and it's been in my head ever since."

            Korra sobbed despite herself. She remembered the conversation, too, and it was never one that he was supposed to hear. She felt ashamed.

            Bolin sighed and held her tighter. "I need you to know, right now, that I will _never_ hurt Opal and I will _never_ hurt you. No matter how mad I get at you for some of the stupid, thoughtless things you say to me, I'll never ever hurt you… And I don't mean the stupid, thoughtless things I say to you, either. I just can't control my mouth right now. I can't control my _anything_ right now. If a thought comes into my head, I say it before I can stop myself. If I have an impulse to do something, I do it before I can stop myself.” He stopped again. Another tremendous sigh. “Look… I know I've been a jerk lately, but it's been a really bad month for me. A _really_ bad month. And that's not an excuse, but... I just need you to know I don't mean it. I don't mean any of it, and I hope you’ll be able to forgive me."

            Again, Korra nodded into his chest, and again she sobbed. But this time Bolin drew away from her, held her by the shoulders and looked down at her with a face full of regret. He looked sad, the way he had when he realized he wouldn't remember.

            "Don't cry," he said, and the same as he had that night he brushed the tears from her cheek with his thumb. Then, with his hand still on her face, he kissed her in the middle of the forehead and hugged her again. "Please don't cry."

  



	18. Falling Apart

            It surprised Korra how easily she and Bolin were able to leave Air Temple Island. Once she had composed herself, Bolin marched right out into the hallway and told the White Lotus guards that he was going for a walk to get some food, and the guards had asked no further questions. Korra wondered if it was because they truly didn't mind his leaving or if it was because of the stone-cold tone he'd taken with them. Whatever it had been, it worked.

            He didn't say another word for the near hour it took to get to police headquarters. He didn't even look at her. Most of the ferry ride from Air Temple Island to the mainland he spent leaning against the railing, apparently spaced out and staring at the water, and he let Korra lead the way once they had disembarked. The whole while the same look stayed on his face, a look that seemed all at once frustrated and sad and tired and resigned, like being out of his room was the last thing in the world he wanted to do.

            Lin and Asami met them at the door, and without much in the way of greeting, Lin shuffled them into a car to be on their way. Asami tried to make small talk at first, but when Bolin responded with shrugs and sighs and general apathy, she stopped. He seemed nonresponsive, all things considered, like his interaction with Korra earlier had taken all the energy out of him.

            She hoped he'd be able to lavabend.

            Korra was grateful when Lin parked the car outside of the familiar metal building. When they all got out, the chief began to speak. She could command Bolin's attention better than anyone, it seemed. She could at least match his attitude.

            "I'm sure Korra explained the situation to you, so I'm not going to harp on about it," Lin said to Bolin as they approached the door, and he nodded. She waved away the metalbenders outside, and then opened the thick metal door to the cell's antechamber. Once everyone was inside, she continued. "Here's the deal: You've got free run. I don't care what you do, as long as it gets the guy to talk. We need to know what he's doing here, why he attacked you, if he has any connection to the people who did Ba Sing Se, and if there are plans to attack Republic City."

            The look on Bolin's face sat somewhere between skeptic and smug. "You know this could tear up your building, right?" he asked coolly.

            "Then tear up the building," Lin replied.

            That seemed to be the end of the talk. Lin approached the cell door and bent it open, and she led them with little ceremony inside.

            Korra wasn't sure what kind of reaction she'd expected from either Bolin or the combustion bender, who still sat in the same position he'd been in when she had come to talk to him. Bolin just stared at him for a while, as though sizing him up, and then he looked to Beifong and said, "This is the guy?"

            Lin nodded.

            "You guys going to stay in here for this?" Bolin asked.                       

            "Figure we should," Lin replied, and when she looked to Asami and Korra for verification, they both nodded.

            "Stay back then."

            With one more sigh, a roll of the shoulders, and a pause to collect himself, Bolin marched purposefully forward. Even from halfway across the wide room Korra could see the combustion bender's face break into an enormous, snide smile.

            "Well, if it isn't the world's most pitiful earthb--"

            The rock caught him in the side of the head before he'd ever finished the sentence, a small stone Bolin had swept from the ground left-handed and flicked at him sidearm. He hadn't even broken stride.

            "Shut up," Bolin snapped. "I'll tell you when it's time to talk."

            Korra felt a nervousness rise in her, and it seemed by the worried expression on Asami's face and Lin's raised eyebrow that she wasn't the only one who found the reaction troubling. They both looked to her then, and Korra felt very small beneath their gazes. As if in explanation, she sheepishly said, "I made him mad before we left. I didn't do it on purpose."

            "Well," Lin grumbled, "at least he's in the right place to take it out this time."

            By this time, Bolin had reached the center of the room and was standing over the combustion bender with his arms crossed. Korra couldn't see Bolin's face, but she could imagine the look he must be wearing. She imagined it was the same look he'd given her when she told him to drop his _woe is me_ attitude earlier.

            "Look," Bolin said sharply, "we can do this one of two ways. You can answer the questions nicely, or we can play dirty."

            Bolin stood impassively as the combustion bender laughed at him. "What could you possibly do, little boy?" he said. "I beat you once, and now that I'm in chains you're here to threaten me. You're a real tough guy."

            "Are you sure that's how you want to play this?" Bolin asked. His voice had gone all low and deadly again, and it sent another shock of anxiety through Korra's middle. "Because you should know that you attacked me on a _very_ bad day."

            The combustion bender laughed again, and this time Korra could see the tension building in Bolin's posture. "Are you trying to save face in front of the ladies?" he mocked. "Putting on a show for the Avatar?"

            "I don't need to put on a show for anyone," Bolin said. "Now, I'll ask one more time: Are we doing this the easy way or the hard way?"

            "As hard as you can give it to me. Please," said the combustion bender.

With a shrug, Bolin turned a bit, looked at Beifong, and said, "You heard him, right, Chief?"

            "I heard him," Lin called back, and though she still looked curious, her voice was all business. "Have at it."

            Bolin turned back to the combustion bender and said, "You heard the lady."

            Korra thought Bolin looked a little slow as he went about assuming his earthbending stance, like he was somehow uncertain about it, but when he planted his right foot and drew his hands upward, a four-foot pillar of earth shot up beneath the combustion bender, who sprawled clumsily down. When he righted himself atop the raised earth, he looked down at Bolin and smiled again.

            "Is that all you've got, little earthbender?"

            "You'll wish it was in a few minutes."

            The combustion man laughed.

            Korra saw Bolin give the tiniest shrug. He rubbed his right shoulder with his left hand as if checking to make sure it was still intact, and then he stepped back a fair distance from the pillar. With an enormous breath, he clapped his palms together and thrust his fingertips toward the ground, drove downward with the full force of his body. Beneath his hands the earth seemed to give way, it dipped and it rolled, and then it liquefied. Slowly, he drew his hands apart, pushing the lava outward and around the pillar, and it looked to Korra as though his manipulation of the earth was taking entirely too much effort. Then again, she had seen relatively little of Bolin's lavabending. She didn't know how effortful a task it was to begin with.

            A glance toward the combustion bender told Korra that her earlier assumption had been right. He hadn’t seen lavabending before; so few people _had_. He had no idea what was going on, no idea what the sudden heat was about. Korra could feel the shift in temperatures keenly herself, and she wasn't nearly as close to the danger as the combustion bender. He looked horrified. His face had screwed up in a mix of awe and terror as he stared down at the radiating, twelve-foot lava moat around his precarious perch, and the next time he looked at Bolin, his eyes had gone very, very wide in disbelief.

            Meanwhile, Bolin had begun to pace, arms crossed again with his eyes on the ground surveying his work. "Okay," he said, and he sounded breathless, "now we can get started." He stopped pacing and looked up at the combustion bender. Now Korra _could_ see his face, and it had gone extraordinarily grave and alarmingly pale. "Here's how this is going to work. I'm going to ask you a question, and you're going to give me an answer. If I don't like the answer, you're going to sink."

            "You wouldn't dare!" the man cried, his bluster returned. "You can't scare me, little boy!"

            Unamused, Bolin said, "Do you want that to be your first strike?"

            The combustion bender spat. And then he dropped. He yelped pitifully.

            "Oh," Bolin chided. "Now you're scared, huh? See, we didn't _have_ to do it this way, but you insisted. You have any idea what it feels like to have a dip in this stuff? You have any idea what it feels like to be touched by it _at all_?" He swept his hand low, motioning toward the liquefied rock, and when the combustion bender didn't respond, he said, "It's not pleasant. Trust me, I know. Now, question one: What's your name?"

            Korra watched the man look between Bolin's unflinching glare and the lava, back to Bolin, to the lava, to Lin, to Korra, to the lava. Bolin had dropped the pillar's height by half, and that seemed to be too close for comfort for the cocky combustion man.

            "You know what," Bolin said out of nowhere, "never mind. Your name isn't important. Let's start with a better question. Why did you attack me?"

            "I was given your name."

            "Who gave you my name?"

            "My master."

            The pillar dropped another few inches, and the combustion bender yelped and clutched at its edges. 

            "Who gave you my name?"

            "His Excellency, Guan, of the Democratic Society of Firebenders. He sent it through a telegraph."

            Bolin glanced back at Lin, and Lin nodded her head. Then he turned back to the man again. "Why did he give you my name?"

            "Because he wanted you dead."

            Another few inches were gone.

            "I don't know why! I just follow the orders I'm given!"

            "Are there more of you in the city?"

            "At least a dozen combustion benders. At least a hundred firebenders. More arrive every day."

            Again, Bolin looked back at Lin, and this time he looked surprised. But Lin shrugged, and he continued. "Are they going to attack me again?"

            The cocky laugh came back, but Bolin didn't drop the pillar. The bender lowered his gaze dangerously. "Once they realize that I'm gone and the job wasn't finished, you'll be dust and your fancy party trick here won't mean a thing.”

            A full foot came off the pillar this time, and when it had finished dropping only a small sliver of earth remained above the bubbling surface of the lava. As it fell, Asami grabbed Korra's hand and gripped it tight, and when Korra looked to her she wore a terrified expression, her eyes squinted like she was too afraid to look.

            "I really don't want to drop you in there," Bolin said placidly. "But I will if I have to."

            "Once His Excellency gives an order it’s carried out, no matter the cost. You _will_ be attacked again, I guarantee it. And if anyone tries to stand in the way, they won't be spared either."

            "Where is the guy who sent you? How can I find him?"

            The combustion bender shook his head, a slightly frantic look about him now. He had gone pale, and Korra could see streams of sweat dripping down his face. He had tried to make himself as small as possible atop his tiny island. "I don't know where he is. He travels. He could be anywhere."

            "Then where did the message come from?"

            "The quarantine," said the bender, and when Bolin set to drop the pillar again he shrieked. "It came from the quarantine!"

            "Explain."

            "It's the quarantine! Where they take new benders! Where they filter them and assign them to work."

            "What kind of work?"

            "Soldiers, laborers, liberators, I don't know! There are dozens of jobs!"

            "Are you the same people who attacked Ba Sing Se? The people who caused the explosion?"

            The combustion bender nodded, and Bolin looked exceptionally angry.

            "It wasn't me!" cried the bender. "It wasn't me! I've been here for a month! I've been here waiting for orders!"

            "Are your people going to attack this city?"

            "It's planned, but I don't know when or how."

            Bolin looked back to Lin one final time, and again she nodded. But this time, she jerked her head toward the door, and it seemed that Bolin understood. He planted his feet in the same way as he had to generate the lava, but this time instead of thrusting his hands toward the ground he extended them slowly, arms crossed at the wrists and fingers splayed wide, then pulled back. He balled his hands into tight fists, and the lava pool cooled and darkened, and by the time he stood straight it had been rendered little more than a smoldering heap of blackened rock.

            With one last spiteful glance to the combustion bender, Bolin began the walk back to the door, his hands in his pockets and his eyes on the ground. He didn't look very well at all.

            "You don't stand a chance!" the combustion bender yelled after him. "One way or another, you'll be taken down like the dogs you are!"

            Bolin stopped mid-step, seething, and stood there for a time in the quiet.

            "You heard me! You'll all be dead!"

            With the slightest tilt of his head, as though contemplating briefly, Bolin about-faced and stormed back toward the combustion bender. Without so much as a word, he wound up, punched, and landed a right hook so powerfully into the man's temple that he toppled at once from the pillar, landing hard on his side on the still-warm ground. He lay limp and silent, and he did not move.

            Bolin stood there for a second, then shook out his right hand and looked at it. He flexed his fingers, rolled his right shoulder again, and turned for the door. As he approached, rubbing his knuckles, he kept his eyes on the ground. Korra could see a tenseness in his body and the slightest tremble in his hands, and when he spoke to Lin his voice was breathless, cold, and quivering.

            "Open the door."

            Lin opened the door, dumbstruck, and Bolin walked past them and out of the room without another word.

 

*****

 

            Something wasn't right.

            Something was horribly, horribly wrong.

            Bolin had expected to be tired, but not so much. He'd expected to feel drained, but not like this. He couldn't catch his breath. His whole body ached, and he couldn't decide which was worse: the pounding in his head or the throbbing in his hand. He felt at once overheated and intensely chilled, dizzy and disoriented but with a clarity of thought and self-awareness that frightened him. Bolin recognized every sensation from the tingling of    his skin to the trembling of his limbs, but he couldn't explain why it had come upon him so suddenly or so powerfully.

            Instinct told him to hide. Instinct told him to find a place where no one could see him in such a sorry state of being, but he didn't have enough energy to look. It was all he could do to keep his feet, even leaning against the smooth metal wall of the anteroom. The cold felt good against his forehead. Everything else felt miserable. His clothes were sticking to his skin. His hand wouldn't stop hurting. His head wouldn't stop pounding. He wanted to take off his jacket.

            "Bolin? Are you okay?"

            He might've lied, had he thought of it. But he didn't think of it. He couldn't think of it. Everything had gone all fuzzy. He could barely hear the words over his own heaving breaths. He couldn't even tell whose voice it was.

            "Are you okay?"

            _No_. He wanted to say the word, but couldn't. He knew he couldn't, but didn't know why he couldn't.

            Now his back was against the wall, though he didn't remember turning. Someone's hand was on his shoulder. The contact ached dully, but was nothing compared to his head. It was nothing compared to his hand. Bolin wondered fleetingly if it might've been a bad idea to punch the combustion bender.

            "Bolin?"

            He couldn't understand the word, but he understood the growing urgency in the voice that had said it. He understood the fearful tone but couldn't discern any meaning.

            Bolin opened his eyes and squinted at the figure in front of him. It took a while for him to realize that he couldn't really _see_ them, and when the thought finally struck, it terrified him. When he realized how long it had taken him to realize, it terrified him even more. The form was blurry. The form was dark. Was it Korra? No. She'd been wearing blue, hadn't she? He strained to identify the color but couldn't get anywhere beyond _dark_. He hoped beyond hope that it wasn't Lin. He'd already embarrassed himself in front of her enough to last a lifetime.

            "Your hand..." The voice said some words beyond that, but they sounded as garbled murmuring.

            Automatically, he raised his right hand and looked at it. Blurry again. It didn't even look like his own. It was too pale. It was shaking horribly. When he turned it over the paleness was streaked with the brightest red he'd ever seen, like tiny floes of lava burning through the snow. It meant something, the red, but he didn't know what. Maybe it was why his hand hurt.

            Was it even his hand?

            Why did it hurt?

            Why was it red?

            He felt profoundly confused, but didn't recognize it as confusion. The self-awareness had gone, but he couldn't know it.

            The voice spoke again, and this time there was no meaning at all. It sounded like some strange foreign language delivered in quavering, horrified tones. Bolin looked at the dark figure curiously. When had they gotten there? How long had they been speaking to him? Did they know he couldn't understand?

            His right knee gave out and he fell, but he didn't know he'd fallen.

            "Korra! Lin!"

            A vague sense of knowing came into Bolin's mind. That hadn't been a call; it had been a mortified shriek. He knew he should have recognized the words. They should have carried meaning. They were important words.

            He couldn't remember when he had laid down.

            His hand hurt. And his head hurt. And he was cold.

            He wanted to sleep.

            As he slept, the boundary between consciousness and unconsciousness disappeared, and in its absence time passed inconsistently. Seconds felt like eons and minutes felt like the blink of an eye. Bolin woke once but couldn't open his eyes. He knew his head was on someone's lap, someone's hand was on his face. It was soft. It was a gentle touch. It was a loving touch. But they were shaking, they were afraid, and he didn't know who it was.

            Then he was gone again.

            The next time he woke his head was still on their lap. He could tell. He could _feel_ it, but he didn't know how. There was a familiar vibration, a rhythm in the body that he recognized. Their hand was on his ribs now. Someone had taken off his jacket, but its weight rested atop him like a blanket. There were more sensations, too. There was a bumpiness that told him he wasn't laying still. There was the sound of frantic conversation. There was a heaviness in the air.

            He fought hard to open his eyes. The light hurt. He closed them against it.

            "Bolin?"

            It was Asami. It was her hand. It was her voice that had shrieked.

            "Is he awake?"

            "Bolin? Are you okay? Can you hear me?"

            He wanted to answer, but he didn't know how to make the words. What came out of him was a jumble of incomprehensible sounds, or at least that's what it sounded like to him. It was as though all the stupidity and brainlessness of the days after the collapse had come back in full, worse than they had ever been before. He couldn't even speak.

            Suddenly someone grabbed his arm. Someone was patting him on the face none too gently. "Look at me!"

            It was Korra. He could feel her. But he couldn't look at her. She felt angry. He couldn't keep his eyes open. He was too tired.

            "When was the last time you ate? Bolin!"

            He was gone before she could finish the words.

            The third time he woke there was an unfamiliar wetness on his face, a soft warmth around his neck. His feet were cold. His hand still ached, but there was a pressure that hadn't been there previously and the sting had gone. There were people talking somewhere in the distance. Something licked his cheek and chittered angrily.

            "Come here, Pabu."

            The warmth went away, but he recognized Asami's voice clearly, and the moment she sat beside him he could _feel_ her again. She had calmed. She wasn't shaking anymore. Firm of hand, she felt his face, pressed her fingers against his throat. Then she sighed.

            "Is he still gone?"

            "I guess. Pabu was going crazy so I came to check."

            He heard a familiar cry of frustration. "I'm never leaving him alone again!"

            "It's not your fault, Korra."

            "I should've noticed! I mean, how many hours did I spend with him? How many days? We ate lunch together like five times! Well, at least _I_ ate lunch and he was _there_. How could I _not_ have noticed it? Tenzin is going to kill me!"

            "It's _not_ your fault."

            "Never again. He's going to eat if I have to shove it down his throat."

            Was that it? Had he forgotten again? Was that what had happened?

            Asami heaved another enormous sigh and stood, but Bolin didn't want her to go. He didn't want to be alone.

            He tried to think of what to say. He tried to think of what words would placate Korra. He tried to think of what words would make up for how badly he had frightened Asami. There had to be something, something beyond _I'm sorry_ that would make amends for all the trouble he’d caused.

            He groaned. And then he hated himself for being so inarticulate.

            All the same, it seemed the noise had been enough. At once Asami was back beside him, closer now, and he could feel her excitement. Her heart was racing. He heard Pabu chitter madly again.

            "Bo?"

            All he could do was groan.

            "Korra!"

            Then he could feel Korra. She was angry. He didn't know how he knew, but he knew beyond a doubt that she was furious. He could feel her breathing. But she sat him up gently and crossed her legs beneath his shoulders, and she held him firm.

            "Come on..." Asami begged. Bolin didn't know what she was talking about. "Come on..."

            She pressed something like a glass to his mouth and tipped it up. She kept begging, and before he could taste what it was, he drank. It was disgusting, whatever it was. It was too sweet, and it dropped into his stomach like a ten-ton boulder. It made him want to retch. But he drank it all the same, and did so greedily and instinctively, without any conscious thought at all. Then it was gone.

            Then he was gone.

 

            "...Zaofu..."

            "...can't send him away..."

            "What about Mako? ...about the search?"

            The words had come through so strong that Bolin thought he was dreaming. But all his dreams lately had been terrible nightmares. This wasn't terrible. It was just talking.

            "I'm not keeping him here. He's got a big fat target on him and now I've got to worry about preventing an attack on the city. I can't protect everyone at the same time!"

            "But what about the flyovers?"

            "You girls can do them. You can take Jinora instead."

            What were they talking about?

            "We don't need three airbenders."

            "And what happens if we find Mako?"

            "You bring him back and it's a pleasant surprise."

            What were they talking about?

            "It's not fair to send him away. Not without talking to him about it. He should have a say in what he does."

            "He lost his say when he starved himself half to death."

            "That's not fair."

            "What's not fair about it? None of us has the time to babysit him all day and night. I've got the city to worry about. You've got the investigation into the Boiling Rock prison, and now it's on the Firelord's orders. We've got to follow up on what the combustion bender said. There's no time for his drama."

            "And Su has time for his drama?"

            "She's got a heck of a lot more of it than I do."

            His hold on consciousness was stronger this time than it had been before, and he recognized the voices clearly. He understood the words and could make meaning out of them, but he remained confused. What about Mako? _Finding_ him? Had he imagined that? And what about Zaofu? Who were they sending away?

            Bolin opened his eyes but he didn't move. He fought to gain his bearings.

            He was in an enormous room with ornate, vaulted ceilings and pillared walls that he recognized at once. This was Asami's office at Future Industries. He was lying on her couch. He'd laid on this couch a thousand times before, but it had never felt quite so comfortable. It had never felt quite so warm. Someone had undressed him, at least partly. His jacket was gone and he couldn't remember losing it. His feet were bare but he couldn’t remember taking off his boots.

            He felt a rustling on his stomach, the pressure of tiny feet digging into his skin. He looked down to see Pabu adjusting himself into a new position, and somehow a comfortable relief flooded through him.

            Whatever had happened was over.

            He was safe.

            "...on their way to get his things. They'll be over in a while. I called Tenzin, too."

            "Mad?"

            "Furious. But I took the fall. Told him it was my order to come along, and to be fair, it was. You could've told him that we were going, though, instead of lying."

            "He was the one that lied to the guard. I just followed him out."

            "Still could've said something."

            "Sorry, but he'd just finished yelling at me, so I wasn't going to argue."

            Bolin tried to pull himself up, but had to stop halfway. Even propped on his elbows his muscles didn't want to hold his weight. His arms started trembling, and when he tried to adjust they gave out entirely. He dropped back down with a breathy grunt, and Pabu bolted upright and whined at him.

            He tried again. And he fell again.

            He was on the third try when he noticed them staring at him from across the room. He stared back, confused. Lin looked angry, Korra looked surprised, and Asami wore a smile so big it looked like her face would split.

            "Lay down, you idiot."

            He didn't lay down. He just stayed propped on his elbow, staring.

            "Lay down or I'll put you down."

            "Be nice, Lin!"

            Bolin wasn't sure if he should've been thankful for Asami's scolding, but she had done it all the same, and as soon as she'd said the words she bolted toward him. The suddenness of her movement disoriented him, and he had to close his eyes.

            "You scared me so much," she cried, and then her arms were around him, holding him upright in a hug so tight it hurt. "Don't ever scare me like that again!"

            He didn't know what to say.

            When Asami pulled away from him, a worry had creased her forehead. Her eyes were wet. "You can understand me this time, can't you?"

            He nodded very slowly.

            She hugged him again. "I thought you were dying!"

            To be fair, he'd thought he'd been dying, too.

            "What happened?" The words took entirely too much effort to say, but not because of his mind. The words had come easily enough, but he felt so drained physically that even moving his mouth felt like an insurmountable task. He reclined weakly on the arm of the sofa, half upright, and for a second he covered his eyes. His head was still pounding. The light was making it worse.

            "You passed out."

            It was Korra who'd said the words, and she didn't look happy.

            "That's one way to describe it," Lin added dryly.

            He didn't want to look at them. So he looked at his hand instead. Someone had wrapped a pristine white bandage from his knuckles to his elbow, but the tiniest hint of red had bled through. He flexed his fingers and wrist, and looked at it again.

            "You split your hand open," Asami said. "It was ugly, but Korra healed it a bit."

            "I hit the metal plate," Bolin corrected. He sounded slow again, just slightly drowsy. "On his forehead."

            "How do you feel?" Asami asked.

            "Bad."

            "Are you hungry?"

            "No."

            She looked over her shoulder and shrugged, seemingly at a loss. But then Korra stood up, and Bolin could tell at once by her posture alone that he was about to get an earful.

            "You self-centered jerk!" she yelled. "How could you? How could you scare us like that and then have the nerve to--"

            "Korra..."

            "You could have _died_! And all because you're too stupid and caught up in your--"

            "Korra, stop."

            The tenderness in Lin's tone startled him, and it seemed to have startled Korra as well. It wasn't a tone she took often, but it had made Korra stop mid-word and stare at her.

            "Stop. And if you can't stop, go cool off somewhere else. We don't need the yelling."

In a huff, Korra left, and she slammed the door behind her so hard that Asami winced. With an enormous sigh, Lin heaved herself to her feet and followed without explanation. Bolin didn't know what to say. The silence left in their wake felt thick and uncomfortable. Even Pabu was quiet.

            "She was really worried," Asami said in a small voice, and then she looked at him sincerely. "We were all really worried. You're not a guy that just...Passes out like that."

            Ashamed, Bolin looked down. Pabu was licking his finger affectionately. When Asami didn't press the point, he felt thankful. She rose and crossed the room, and when she returned she pressed a cup into his hands.

            "Drink this. Please. It'll help."

            Bolin looked into the cup. It was viscous and orange and entirely unappetizing. "What is it?"

            "Just drink it."

            "No?"

            Asami snatched the cup from his hand and drank from it, and then with a look of satisfaction she handed it back. "See?" She said. Bolin thought she was talking to him like she'd talk to Rohan. "It's not that bad."

            Bolin drank. And his nose curled up in disgust.

            "I know you don't like lychee but it's all I had. I tried to mix it to make--"

            "It's fine."

            The silence fell again like a veil and Asami sat heavily back down, closer to him this time. She practically landed on top of his feet. Between tentative sips, Bolin stared at his knees. At least Pabu was there to keep him company this time. At least Pabu wouldn't judge him. And at least Asami sitting on his feet was keeping them warm now.

            "Lin wants to send you to Zaofu."

            "What?" he snapped, suddenly at attention, and the look on his face must've startled Asami because she recoiled. He knew the tone in his voice had startled Pabu, as he jumped frantically to Asami's shoulder. "What do you mean, _Lin wants to send me to Zaofu_? For what? Why?"

            Asami stammered, and Bolin knew he'd flustered her. He felt her tense up through his feet. It must've been his tone. He must've sounded angrier than he thought he had.

            "I'm sorry," he said. He dropped his head low again. It seemed like he was apologizing to everyone for everything lately. "I didn't mean to snap. I really didn't."

            "Korra told me you've been..." Asami paused, fidgeted, and stared at her fingers. She'd trailed off like she couldn't think of a delicate enough word. "She told me you've been that way."

            "What way? Stupid? Pitiful? A jerk? An idiot? Take your pick."

            "You're not stupid. And you're not pitiful. You're not a jerk. And you're not an idiot."

            Bolin laughed despite himself, and it didn't sound to him as normal. It was frigid and joyless and altogether cynical. "Right."

            "You shouldn't talk like that," Asami said directly. "It doesn't suit you."

            He shut up. He didn't understand. Even Korra had called him a jerk. Even Korra hadn't said anything when the cynicism came out full force. It was like Asami was scolding him. But she had done it softly. She had done it kindly. She wasn't angry with him. She didn't _feel_ angry.

            "Why?" Bolin asked again, and this time his voice was small, too. "Why does Lin want to send me away?"

            Asami sighed. "She has a lot of reasons. And some of them are really good reasons, too. I guess when it comes down to it, she doesn't think you're getting better."

            He drank to cover the disgusted look on his face. What was he supposed to say to that?

            "Korra doesn't think you're getting better, either."

            Now he glared at her again. "How? She's been training me every morning for the last week!"

            "I know, Bolin. I know. Now, stop yelling at me. I'm on your side."

            "There shouldn't be a _side_ at all!"

            Asami kept quiet for a while, lifted Pabu off her shoulder and placed him back down on Bolin's knee. She looked like she was thinking. Then she said, "I came to visit you a lot." She sounded sad. "You know that. I hope you remember that. But every time I came, I kept my mouth shut. I didn't make you talk and I didn't make you listen to me talk. I wanted you to take your time and speak up when you were ready. I didn't want to push you."

            Bolin didn't know what to say. What _could_ he say?

            "But I'm going to speak up now, and I want you to listen. I'm not going to ask you not to get angry. That wouldn't be fair. But I will ask you not to yell at me anymore. Can you agree to that?"

            He nodded. The lychee juice sat heavily in his stomach. He couldn't have said anything if he'd wanted to. He was too nervous. Asami had never taken this tone with him before, a tone that was all at once affectionate and terse and loving and annoyed. He would have said that she sounded like Opal when Opal was upset, but it wasn't the same.

            "I'm not going to try to tell you what you should and shouldn't be doing. That's not my place. But from what I've seen lately, you're _not_ making progress. You're _not_ getting better." She looked him in the eye, and the expression made his stomach jerk. It was like she was looking through him. "You're getting _worse_. Yeah, I know that you can get up and move. You can bend again. You can talk. But you're not the same. It's like you're a completely different person and I don't know why, and I don't know what I can do to help, so I've just been sitting around waiting for you to speak up and say what you need. But you haven't. To anyone."

            "Asami, I--"

            She held up her hand, and Bolin went quiet again. "I'm not trying to make you explain yourself. But you deserve to know these things. You _need_ to know these things, and I don't think anyone is going to tell you except for me. I mean, Korra didn't even _talk_ to you for a week after you were attacked, she didn't even visit you, and I don't know what that was all about. I couldn't say your name without her looking like she was going to cry or puke or..." She breathed deeply. "The point here is that maybe you're recovering physically, but mentally? Emotionally? You haven't made any improvement at all, and everyone is really worried. I mean, it goes beyond worry. We're _scared_. We don't know what's going on with you because you won't talk to anyone. We can't help you because you won't tell us what you need."

            Pabu whimpered, and Asami went all tense. Bolin could feel her nervousness, but he didn't know how. She had kept a straight face, had maintained her posture. But there was _something_...

            "It's really hard for me to say this, okay? And this is the part that I'm scared you'll yell at me about. But _I_ think you're not getting better because you don't know how. You've been falling apart ever since we went to the South Pole, and you don't know how to put yourself back together because you've never had to do it before. That's what I think. But Korra and Lin? And Tenzin? And pretty much everyone _except_ for me? They think you're not getting better because you don't _want_ to."

            The indignation welled up again. The anger welled up again, but Bolin kept quiet. He promised he wouldn't yell. He promised he wouldn't snap at her, and he meant to make good on that. So he sat and stared at his empty cup, at Pabu nestling on his middle, and clenched his jaw.

            "I don't know what to think about that," Asami went on, and her voice was barely above a whisper now. "They just told me that today, and I..." Another sigh. "I don't want to believe that they're right. But then Korra told me that you said something the other day that freaked her out, and then she told me that--"

            "What did she tell you I said?"

            Asami shook her head. Her heart was pounding but she still spoke plainly. "I don't remember exactly what it was. Something about you being ashamed of something and that you wanted to die."

            He remembered exactly what he'd said. He remembered it clearly. He'd said that he'd been so ashamed of losing control in front of Lin and Su that he wished he could die. The thought had scared him, yes, but he hadn't considered it much beyond that. He'd convinced himself that it was just an intrusive thought. He hadn't realized that it had scared Korra, too. At any rate, there was nothing Bolin could do to refute her. He'd said the words as plain as day.

            Asami continued, more tentative now, more nervous. "And then she told me you haven't been eating, and that's why you fainted today. You know, at first I thought, 'He must've just skipped breakfast,' and then you lavabent and I know that takes a lot out of you on a _good_ day, and I figured the combination must've just been too much so soon. But she told me that it went beyond that. _Days_ , Bolin. She said it'd been going on for _days_. She said it's been going on since you were moved to Air Temple Island, and that was almost two weeks ago. And... I didn't think anything about you not eating while you were in the hospital because nobody really has an appetite when they're in a hospital, and I didn't really think about it when I brought you food because I figured you'd already eaten and just weren't hungry. I didn't know I was so wrong. How could I have known?"

            Bolin hoped the question had been rhetorical.

            "So, I'm going to ask you straight. When was the last time you had anything to eat?"

            "Last night."

            "What was it?"

            "Pema brought me a steam bun."

            " _A_ steam bun. What else did you have yesterday?"

            "Nothing."

            "The day before yesterday?"

            "I don't remember."

            Asami dropped her face into her hands and sighed. "And _that's_ why Lin wants to send you to Zaofu."

            "It's not on purpose," Bolin argued. "It wasn't like I was _trying_ to--"

            "Then why?"

            He didn't know. He really didn't know. He'd had too much else on his mind. He'd just forgotten. He hadn't realized. He felt ashamed again.

            "Maybe you weren't trying. Maybe not on purpose. But something somewhere in your head made you stop eating and I mean... We were going to take you back to the hospital, but Lin said that was too risky considering what happened last time, and that we should try to get something in you and use the hospital as a last resort. You were _completely_ nonresponsive for four hours. Do you know how terrifying that was?"

            He didn't. He'd been unconscious.

            "Do you think I should go?" Bolin asked. His voice was quivering again. "To Zaofu?"

            "I don't know. Maybe. Lin is going to have her hands full, based on what the combustion guy said. And Korra and I... Well..."

            "You're going to go do something for the Firelord," Bolin finished for her. "I heard you talking about it."

            Asami's face went instantly pale, and she stared at him wide-eyed. "You heard that?"

            "Yeah, I heard."

            "Well, we've got to go do that, so we won't be around to take care of you. Su has to go back to Zaofu in a couple days anyway. Tenzin's going to lose his mind if you keep snapping at him. Part of me wants to say, ‘Yes, go to Zaofu,’ but I really don't know. If I thought you would...If I thought you _could_ take care of yourself I'd say to stay here."

            "You don't think I'll take care of myself?"

            "I didn't say that," Asami said, but Bolin could feel the nervousness mounting in her again. It was stronger this time. "That's not what I meant. I just worry that..."

            He finished the sentence for her, deadpan. "That I'm going to kill myself."

            "No!" Asami had yelped like his words had surprised her. "No! I don't think that at all! Nobody ever said that!"

            The room went all quiet, and for the longest time Bolin just looked at her. He stared at her face gone neutral again, trying to read her. Something was off. He could feel it, and now that he thought about it he had felt the changes in her mood the whole time she'd been sitting on the couch with him. He'd felt her coming to the pavilion that morning, a time that felt like years ago. Now he thought on it, he'd known about Korra's nervousness, too. He'd felt it the same way. And her anger. And her frustration. The strangest sensation had come over him, a knowing without knowing how.

            "Who said it?" he asked coldly.

            Asami went paler still. "Nobody said anything like that! Why would anyone say anything like that?"

            He knew. He didn't know how he knew. Maybe it was the look on her face. Maybe it was the tone of her voice. Maybe it was the strange feeling in the pit of his stomach. He couldn't pinpoint it, but he knew that he knew. "You tell me," he said. "Why _would_ someone say that about me?"

            It seemed that she was trying not to look afraid.

            "Never mind," Bolin said, and he looked back at Pabu and poked at his stomach a bit. Pabu chittered happily. He tried to sound relaxed. "I believe you."

            She calmed a bit and shifted uncomfortably beside him. "I should go check on Korra and Lin. And Su and Opal were going to come by with some things for you to stay the night here." She stood and collected the empty cup from Bolin's hands. "Figured it'd be better for you to just rest here instead of going all the way back to Air Temple Island. They're going to bring some dinner for all of us, if you'll have some."

            Bolin watched her carefully as she approached the door, and on a whim, he mustered all his strength, sat up, and planted his feet firmly on the floor. "Asami?" He called, and she turned around. "Do you think I'm going to be okay? Really?"

            She smiled, and it looked to Bolin like a genuine smile. "Of course I do."

            Somehow, Bolin knew.

            She was lying.

 

 


	19. The Horrible Truth

            Bolin lay on the couch for a long time after Asami left, his mind a jumble of anger and confusion and indignation. How could they all get things so wrong? All of them had assumed to know things that they could never hope to imagine. They were all trying to read more into his head than what ever existed there.

            The things Asami said had stung, and Bolin couldn't be sure if he was more upset about the truths she had told or more upset that she had lied to his face about what everybody thought of him. After all, wasn't that the most important truth of them all? That they were scared? That they were worried that he'd gone so far off the deep end that he'd end up dead? That they were all too afraid of him and what he might do to say to his face that they thought he’d kill himself?

            He sighed and tried to think about what he had done to give them the impression that he'd been contemplating such drastic measures. Sure, he'd not been eating, but that was more often than not because he simply forgot, and since waking after the collapse he'd had no real appetite anyway. It didn't matter. Every time he ate he felt like throwing it back up. It wasn’t like he was trying to punish himself or hurt himself or something. He was just _sick_. And maybe he'd said things that had alarmed people, but that was only because the filter between his brain and his mouth hadn’t reset itself, and whatever came into his mind came out of his mouth before he could stop it. He figured everyone knew that, considering the strange, incoherent, and often completely out of character things he’d been saying to them. Besides, actions spoke louder than words, and he hadn’t _done_ anything that might make someone think he would hurt himself.

            Except for the lashing out at people...

            And acting constantly angry...

            And acting constantly sad...

            And sleeping all the time...

            And forgetting to eat...

            And avoiding people...

            Uncontrollable cynicism...

            Having nightmares...

            Fainting...

            A cold shock shot through his middle and hung heavy in his chest. Suddenly, he found himself wondering if the intrusive thoughts hadn't necessarily been _intrusive_. Maybe they had always been there. Maybe they had just come to the front of his mind as a result of recent events.

            Maybe it was true.

            As he sat there, staring idly at Pabu sleeping, he considered for the first time that things could very well be worse than he'd thought. He considered for the first time that things may have gone beyond his control. Maybe Asami had been telling the truth. Maybe the others had picked up signals that he never meant to send and didn't ever know he was sending. Maybe it was all subconscious.

            It made sense. He hadn’t felt good in what seemed like forever. He always felt heavy, like enormous weights had been tied to his arms and legs. The simple acts of standing and walking and talking and _moving_ had all begun taking tremendous effort, like they had his first few days out of the hospital. He was miserable. He'd been miserable ever since his brain came back. And the longer he felt miserable and tired and angry the less he cared about doing anything at all. It had become so hard for him to motivate himself that even getting out of bed in the mornings to go train with Korra had become difficult.

            But Korra… She didn't have to yell at him like that. She didn't have to call him a jerk and tell him that he was sulking and generally insult him. And Lin didn’t have to send him to Zaofu. He was perfectly capable of taking care of himself: He’d just scared the combustion bender who attacked him into confessing secrets that not even the Avatar could get out of him. And Tenzin didn’t have to try to ground him to his room.

            It was no wonder he felt so bad about himself with everyone ganging up on him. It was no wonder he hated himself with everyone treating him like a brain-dead child.

            It was all Korra's fault. If she hadn't said anything to Asami then no one would have thought anything was wrong. If she hadn't planted the idea in their heads and given them something to watch for, they wouldn't have seen anything. And they only interpreted what they'd seen as they had because they were watching so closely for something that didn't exist. Everything he'd done recently, even the snapping and avoiding people and starving, it was all a result of the collapse. It was all _physical_ ; it was all out of his hands. He couldn't control his body. He could scarcely control his conscious thoughts, let alone the subconscious signals his addled brain was sending out. How could they blame him for that? How could they punish him for that? How could they fault him for considering a way out?

            The anger drove him to his feet, all his exhaustion forgotten. He didn't even move Pabu before he got up to march in a rage toward the door, and the fire ferret whined after he dropped to the floor. All Bolin could think about was how badly Korra had betrayed him. It was all her fault. She should've kept her mouth shut. He should've been able to confide in her without worrying that she'd go spilling his business to others. He would never have done that to her. He needed to have a word with her. He needed a strong word. He needed to tell her to mind her own business and to stop spreading lies and to leave him alone. He didn't need her help. He didn't _want_ her help, especially if it meant that everyone thought he was going to _kill himself_. Never mind waterbending. Never mind meditation and focus and training. He didn't need it. He didn't need anyone, and he was going to let them know it.

            "Bolin? You should be lying down! You can't be up right now! Are...Are you okay?"

            He'd barely entered the hall when Asami cried the words from the doorway of the room adjacent. He was too caught up in his anger to hear the concern in her voice. "Didn't you just tell me that you weren't going to tell me what I should or shouldn’t do?" he snapped. "Ten minutes ago you said that, or are you too dumb to remember?"

            She stared at him. He couldn't read her face, but he could feel her nerves springing back up. "I think you should go lay back down."

            "Don’t tell me what to do!"

            Wide eyed, Asami bolted into the room, and Bolin made to follow her inside. But then Korra and Lin appeared, and neither of them looked pleased. For a few moments too long they stood in the hallway staring like they were trying to get a read on the situation, and every second Bolin spent glaring at Korra, his anger multiplied. It filled him, gave him energy, obscured his mind, and by the time he began shouting there wasn’t a coherent thought anywhere to be found.

            "This is your fault!" he yelled. "All of this is _your_ fault and--"

            "My fault?" Korra interrupted, confused. "How is any of this my fault? You're the one--"

            "You can't keep your fat Avatar mouth shut!"

            Korra's eyes went wide. She looked scandalized. And then she blew up, too. "You _must_ be brain damaged! I’ve done nothing but help you since you woke up!"

            "You’ve done nothing but _avoid me_ since I woke up!"

            "Kids," Lin said calmly, and she moved to step between them. "You both need to--"

            "Shut up!"

            They had roared the words at her as one, and Bolin paused in his tirade only long enough to watch Lin slide back toward the wall with an alarmed look about her. Then he went back to Korra. "I can’t believe you! You’re disgusting! You get everyone all worked up and set them against me and now they--"

            "I got everyone all worked up? _I_ did that? You’re the one exploding at everyone! You’re the one setting everyone against you! You’re the one starving yourself to death and expecting nobody to do anything about it!"

            "That’s not your business! What I do--"

            "How is it not my business? You’re my friend!"

            "I don’t need friends! I need you all to leave me alone and let me--"

            "Let you what, Bolin? Self-destruct? You’re doing a _fine_ job of that! It doesn’t matter what we do! It doesn’t matter how much we tell you we care because you’re too caught up in feeling sorry for yourself to care back!"

            "I'm _hurt_ , Korra!"

            "Then let us help you!"

            "I don’t need your help! I don’t need anyone’s help! I need you to leave me alone and stop making everyone think--"

            "I’m not making anyone think anything!"

            " _You’re_ not thinking anything!"

            "What does that even mean?"

            "If you had thought at all about the things you say to people then I wouldn’t be in this mess! If you thought about it for half a minute you’d see that everything you think is going on with me is _completely_ wrong and _completely_ made up and _completely stupid!_ "

             Korra seemed to go soft, and Bolin stared at her.  "What are you even talking about?” She looked mad and confused. He could feel her anger.

            "What do you mean, _what am I talking about?_ Don’t play dumb with me." Bolin’s voice had gone quiet and hoarse. His throat hurt from the yelling. His head hurt again, and his ears were thumping as his heart pounded. The exhaustion was catching back up. It drained him fast. "You know exactly what I’m talking about. You told Asami what I said and she told everyone else what I said and now everyone thinks I’m going to…"

            He couldn’t force out the words. They got caught, and he faltered.

            "You can’t seriously think that’s my fault," Korra said, incredulous. "I was _worried_ about you! You can’t get mad at someone for being worried about you! I was scared! You can’t just say you wished you were dead and then--"

            "It was hypothetical!" Bolin roared. He hadn't wanted her to say the words either.

            "It was not!"

            The screaming started again.

            "Don’t you think for a _second_ that you know what’s going on in my head!"

            " _You_ don’t even know what’s going on in your head!"

            "Maybe not, but at least I’m not bothering anyone else with it! At least I'm keeping it to myself!"

            "That's the problem!"

            "It’s only a problem because you’re making it a problem!"

            Korra stopped then, and her posture relaxed as though all the fight had gone out of her. It should have been a jarring change, but Bolin didn't relax. He couldn't relax. All the tension had wound up inside him and it wouldn't go away. He could barely even breathe.

            "Is that really what you think?" Korra asked. The confusion seemed to be outweighing the anger now. There was a distinct concern about her, a tenderness that, if he'd had his head about him, would have been profoundly alarming. "Really? You think that just because you keep it to yourself that it's not a problem?"

            Bolin seethed.

            "Listen to yourself," Korra reasoned. "Do you understand what you're saying?"

            "I know exactly what I'm saying."

            "Then how could you possibly not understand why we're worried?"

            "Because what I do to myself is none of your business!"

            Korra took a very deep breath. "So what you're telling me is that if some morning you don't show up to training and I go to your room and find you unconscious or _dead_ that it's _not my business_? Is that it?"

            Bolin didn't want to agree with her out of sheer blind stubbornness.

            "Would you rather we had left you there? Would you rather we'd left you lying on the floor in that prison? Because if we had then it wouldn't be a _hypothetical_. If we had left you there you _would_ have died, no question about it."

            "Good!"

            He didn't know why he said it. He hadn't even _said_ it: He'd spat it out like a curse. He was just so angry he couldn't control it. But the moment the word had come out he felt a heat wash over him, an embarrassment that made him regret that he'd ever left the couch. It was the same embarrassment he'd felt when he realized what he'd done to Su and Lin. It was exactly the same, all full of self-loathing and shame and the insurmountable desire to crawl into a hole and die. He didn't consider the irony. All he could do was stand there and feel Lin and Asami staring stupefied at him, and watch Korra's disgusted face watching him back. The silence itself was unnerving even without their disbelieving expressions. It hung like death. There were witnesses. It was traumatic. He'd confessed.

            He wasn't expecting Opal's voice to ring out behind him, much less for it to sound so happy.

            "You're awake!"

            He certainly wasn't ready to catch her. He was still too stunned by what he'd said to register that she was coming at him. But Opal didn't know that, she couldn’t have known that, and she rushed at him and threw herself against him the same as she had done every time she'd seen him for the last four years.

            It was the first time he didn’t catch her.

            Instead, his legs buckled awkwardly under her weight and he fell.

            The pain hit him at once, a pain so visceral that it radiated through the whole of his body. He felt it in his stomach so heavily that he thought he might be sick, and a dull, intense throb stabbed him deep in the middle of his back. It took his breath away. His shoulder had come out. He knew the sensation too well. He must’ve tried to catch himself when he fell, but he didn’t remember it. He didn’t remember when it came out. He barely remembered falling.

            Instinct drove the next minutes. As soon as he’d come to and realized what had happened he pushed himself up left-handed, then drove his back toward the wall. Knees up, he wrenched his limp elbow onto his thigh and pushed against it with his body, but he was too weak. It wouldn’t go back in. He couldn't get the leverage. He didn't have the strength to force it. He could feel the bones grinding against each other, the flesh twitching in spasms of agony.

            As he struggled he noted the absolute quiet. No one said a word. No one moved a muscle. They were staring at him. He could tell. They were afraid. He could feel it. But he hadn’t made a noise either, and now that he recognized he had an audience he strained even more to struggle in silence.

            But then Lin dropped beside him, she practically dove to the ground, and she pushed him upright against the wall so hard he smacked his head against it. He hadn't known he'd slumped down so far. "I swear if you fight me I'll lay you out."

            He didn't know what she did. His head was swimming, and for the tiniest moment the pain multiplied so that he saw stars even with his eyes closed. He thought for certain he'd pass out again. Then the brace was gone. Then there was an enormous pressure and blinding pain. Then his shoulder was back in. It should have been magical, it should have been relief, but everyone was still staring at him with looks of disgust and disbelief.

            He'd confessed, and he didn't even know why he'd done it.

            As soon as the feeling came back to his arm he clapped his hands behind his head, fingers locked tight at the base of his skull, and forced his face down to his knees. He dropped his elbows low, pressed them inward as hard as he could. He felt himself trembling again. It was inevitable. He could feel it. He was going to fall apart and everyone was watching him.

            They couldn't see it.

            He had to hide.

            He had to hold it in.

            They kept staring, and all he wanted was to be left alone.

            "Bolin, I'm so sorry!" Opal sounded like she was going to cry. She dropped down in front of him. He felt a gentle thump as she moved toward him. "I'm so, so sorry. I'm so sorry, I didn't know--"

            He didn't know how, but he knew she was reaching for him. She wanted to touch him. She always wanted to touch him. But if she did, he would break. If she made contact it would be the end. If she touched him, he would fall apart in front of everyone. They couldn't see. He didn't want them to see.

            He had to make them go away.

            "Don't touch me, Opal."

            He didn't know how she heard the words. He didn't even know how he made the words. They had come out a low, feral growl between heaving breaths. But it worked. She drew away from him. She was horrified. He could feel it.

            Even Lin had recoiled.

            Good.

            Now they might go away.

            The horrible silence fell again, and all Bolin could hear was the sound of his own uncontrolled breathing, sharp and shallow and dizzying. He knew they could hear it, too, and he tried to hold it in but that only made it worse.

            Asami tried next. She stepped forward more tentatively than Opal had. "Come on, now," she said. Her voice was soft again, the same as it had been before but with the slightest quiver. "Let's get you back lying down. You'll feel better once you..."

            He was too focused on holding himself together to realize that she had reached out for him, too. It felt like he was going to explode, and if he lost focus for even half a second everything would come pouring out in one violent burst.

            Then she touched his arm.

            "Leave me alone!"

            Bolin had never known he was capable of producing such an enormous noise. The words had come out of him so loud that his voice cracked. It had been aggressive, desperate, threatening, and deafening. It startled him, and he drew himself in tighter, ashamed.

            But it worked. Asami jumped back. Korra jumped back and she hadn't even been close. He'd frightened them as much as he'd frightened himself. He held his breath to stifle a sob. His face felt so hot. The pressure inside amplified.

            "Girls, go on. You, too, Lin, keep an eye on them." It was Su. He hadn't even known she was there: He hadn’t felt her. He wanted to throw up but there was nothing in him. "I'll take care of him. Go on now, I mean it."

            They left. Bolin felt them retreat back into Asami's office, and he heard the tiniest click as the door latched shut. He heard Opal burst into hysteric tears. He heard Pabu scratching at the wood. But Su was still there. She was still standing there staring at him all curled up and trembling like an idiot. Of all the people to stay there, why did it have to be her?

            She moved slowly, with such a softness of step that he could scarcely feel her moving at all. But then she slid down the wall to his left and sat so close beside him that her shoulder was touching his. His skin felt cold against her arm. He could feel the violence in his shaking.

            "I know you don't want anyone here," she said. Her voice was just above a whisper, a tone she most certainly meant to calm him. But he just shook harder. He had to hold it in. She was pitying him. He hated her. "I know you don't want anyone to see you like this, but I'm not going to leave you by yourself. I can't leave you by yourself like this. You need a mom right now, and I'm the closest thing you've got."

            He almost broke. A single thread of stubborn willpower was all that kept him from bursting. He didn't know how he was holding himself together.

            "I don't know what happened just now, before Opal and I got here," Su cooed at him, "but I'm not going to think any less of you for it." She wrapped her arm around his shoulders, a gentler touch than even Asami's had been. He didn't know it was possible to tense any more, but he did. His whole arm seared with lingering pain. He trembled harder. "You're shaking like a leaf. You've got to relax a little, sweetheart."

            He didn't. He wanted to pull away from her, but there wasn't enough energy left. He wanted to yell. They were still listening, Korra and Lin and Opal and Asami. They were still listening by the door, and he wanted to scream at them to go away. But all he could do was hold himself in his tiny ball, shiver, and try his best to breathe.

            "Do you know what you're doing to yourself right now?" she asked, and it was clear that he wasn't expected to answer. He was thankful for that. "You're making yourself panic. I can tell. See, you keep holding your breath, and then you gasp, and then you hold it again. Pretty soon here you're going to hyperventilate, and then you're going to faint again. I love you dearly, Bolin, but I can't carry you if you faint."

            He felt them listening.

            "Why won't you let go?" She touched her hand to the back of his head now, stroked his hair. "You think I haven't seen a boy cry before? I raised four of them. And none of the boys can hold a candle to Bataar. He falls apart over everything."

            He managed to shake his head. Then he gasped again. She had been right. He could feel his breaths coming faster, shallower, quivering. It was a feeling unlike any he'd ever had, as though he'd compressed every overwhelming emotion into one enormous black hole of pure, uncontrollable panic. He couldn't think straight. All that was in his head was the fear of what he'd said, of the inevitable consequences once he straightened out. Everyone had heard the words. Everyone had heard him confess.

            "What can I do to help you?"

            It took every ounce of his composure to say, "Make them go away," and again his voice hadn't sounded like his own.  He sounded sick.

            "What?"

            "They're listening!"

            "Who?"

            It hurt his shoulder, but he jabbed his finger toward the door. He imagined it would've taken more effort and more pain to say the words. He didn't want to talk. Talking only made things worse.

            Su rose, and when she walked away Bolin curled back into his ball. He tried to breathe. He tried to stop the shaking. He tried to relax.

            It was futile.

            "I need you all to go away," Su said, and she sounded very far away. "No standing by the door and no eavesdropping. I mean it. You're not helping. Go on. Get yourselves figured out."

            The door clicked shut again, and Bolin could feel Korra and Asami and Lin and Opal retreating. The farther they went the fainter they felt, until their motions were only hints of vibration. And then Su was next to him again, her hand on his back. He could feel her looking at him, nervous. He could feel it through her touch.

            "How did you know they were there?"

            He shook his head again. He didn't _know_ how he knew. That was the problem. He couldn't stop gasping long enough to say the words. He wasn't sure he could have explained it if he tried. 

            "Bolin?" She sounded very slightly scared now. "If you don't talk to me I can't help you."

            "I can _feel_ them! I can _still_ feel them!"

            It took a long pause, but then Su said, "Oh, dear." Another pause and she shifted. She sat on her knees in front of him, and as she moved she kept her hand on his back, on his arm, on his leg. "I'm going to move you now, Bolin. Just stay calm." She grasped him gently by each ankle, lifted his feet, and planted them firmly on her thighs. She was warm.

            The chaos stopped, and for a moment all that was left was the panic and hate and terror rolling in waves through his body.

            "Is that better?" Su asked. "Can you feel them anymore?"

He didn't say anything. He just shook his head weakly and tightened his ball. He heard her utter another mystified, "Oh, dear" before scooting closer to him. She adjusted his feet on her legs, and then placed her hands gently on the outsides of his thighs. He didn't mind the touch. She was just slightly nervous, but she was _even_. She was constant. She was         comfortable.

"Just focus on me," she said, and she rubbed his legs like she might rub a child's back. "All     you can do now is ride it out. Just focus on me, and try to breathe."

He tried. And he trembled. And he thought about how pitiful he must look sitting there curled up on the floor with someone else's mother holding him like a baby while he tried to      disappear.

            It was too much.

            To her great credit, Su didn't say a single word when the first sob slipped out. She didn't shush him or try to comfort him. The break was just as violent as he'd imagined it would be, but it was unbelievably quiet. Even as it happened he was amazed by just how silent he kept himself. The loudest noise he made was a sniffle when he couldn't catch his breath, a pathetic whimper when he tried to push it all back in and failed. That was all. And she was quiet, too. Through all the convulsive heaves and stifled sobs she said nothing. She just sat there, gently rubbing his legs. She didn't try to move him, didn't try to uncoil him from his tiny little ball, didn't try to make him raise his head. She just sat. She was just _present_.

            Then it was done, and all that was left was emptiness, an exhaustion so complete it nearly overshadowed the embarrassment. He kept his head down and forced himself to draw slow, shuddering breaths. He couldn't move if he tried.

            Suyin sighed. Bolin wanted to apologize, but he couldn't bring himself to speak. He was too ashamed. He was too tired. It all had caught back up to him.

            "You're an incredible young man," she said at last, and she put her hand on the back of his head again.

            He said nothing. All he could do was breathe and hate himself for doing it.

            "I can't think of a better person for Opal to be with. I hope you know that." She waited for a while, and then sighed again. "When Lin called me and told me what happened I was terrified. And it wasn't Lin that scared me. She was holding herself together, but that's Lin, you know. Nothing ever seems to get to her. What scared me was that I heard Asami crying behind her. I could hear it over the phone. And Korra was yelling at you and you weren't yelling back. That's how I knew something was really horribly wrong."

            Bolin wanted to curl up again. Why was she rubbing his nose in this? Asami had already done it.

            "What I mean is that people care about you more than you give them credit for. We all just want you to be happy and healthy. You can't give me any grandchildren if you're not happy and healthy."

            Somehow, the statement made him raise his head and glare at her.

            "You look absolutely horrible," Su said with the slightest smile, and she put her hand on his face, then on his shoulder. Then she looked at him in earnest, and he watched her eyes move up and down his body. He felt self-conscious again. He wanted his jacket back. He wanted to hide. Suyin sighed again, and then met his eyes. She looked sad. "There's hardly any of you left, is there?"

            Bolin felt his forehead wrinkle, confused.

            "I want you to come back to Zaofu," she said, and she didn't look upset. She didn't feel upset. "I think it would do you a lot of good to get away from here. There's too much going on for you to focus on healing."

            He just stared.

            "You poor thing," she said sadly. "You understand what I'm saying to you, don't you?"

            He nodded.

            "How many pounds are you down now? Twenty? Thirty?"

            Bolin shook his head, folded his arms on his knees, and laid his forehead atop them. He didn't know what to say. He didn't want to say anything. He didn't even want to look at her. He didn't want her to look at him. He just wanted to disappear.

            "You're not going to talk to me, are you?"

            She had sounded so sad. She sounded so concerned. But he didn't want to talk to her. He didn't want to talk to anyone.

            "It's okay if you don't want to talk. You don't have to. We can just sit until you feel better."

            Bolin wanted to laugh at the absurdity of her statement. Feel better? There was no feeling better.

            "You've had a rough time lately," Su went on, apparently oblivious to his mounting cynicism. "I know that. Everyone does. But things will get better. I promise they'll get better. They always do. You've just got to hang on long enough to give it a chance."

            So she thought it, too.  Asami had been right.

            "I want you to come back to Zaofu with me," she repeated again. "I want you to come home with me so that you can heal up and get back to normal."

            He did laugh that time, the same cold, joyless, and hateful laugh he'd leveled at Asami, except this time it was thick from the crying. He felt her heart skip a beat.

            "Oh, dear."

            He wished she'd quit saying that.

            "Look," she said after a time in quiet, "I want to ask you a question, and all you've got to do is nod your head at me. Can you do that?"

            He nodded, but didn't look up.

            "Good." She put her hand back on his head and rubbed at it with her thumb. "You were supposed to be on bed rest for two weeks, weren't you?"

            He nodded again.

            "You didn't make it two weeks, did you?"

            He shook his head.

            "How many days did you follow orders? Two? Three?"

            He nodded.

            She laughed. It was a genuine laugh such that he could feel the joy through her legs and through his feet and into the pit of his stomach, and for the tiniest moment he thought she was laughing _at_ him. But then she said, "I knew the minute they told me you were supposed to stay in bed that you wouldn't. I told them, too, but they didn't listen."

            He wanted to tell her that it wasn't funny.

            "But I think I'm more impressed that you were able to get up after such a short time. Who helped you?"

            He shook his head again. He'd done it all on his own beginning on the fourth day. He hadn't even been able to think straight yet. He'd just known that he wanted to stand up, and he’d tried. He proceeded to fall down and sit in the floor for two hours before he could muster the strength to get back on the bed, but it all been on his own. And he'd tried several times each day every day after that to get up until he could, and then he just _stood_ , and that took more effort than he ever believed possible. Nobody knew about that, though, and he wasn't keen on letting anyone find out.

            "So, what's this all about then?" Her hands weren't on him anymore.

            Bolin looked up at her, curious, and noted that she had retrieved his shoulder brace from the ground where Lin had discarded it. She was turning it over in her hands the same way he had done when he first took it out of its box. Then she finally righted it and held it up to him.

            "Ah. You had this on, didn't you? Before Opal tackled you."

            He nodded.

            "I'm guessing it's supposed to support your shoulder?"

            " _Supposed_ to," he said, deadpan.

            Su smiled an enormous smile. "There he is."

            He put his head back down.

            "And there he goes."

            "Shut up, Su."

            She laughed at him. "Feisty now, are we?" Her voice went fairly serious. "Look, sweetie, I want to help you. But you've got to _let_ me help you first, and the best way to do that is going to be for you to come home with me so I can keep an eye on you."

            "I don't need help."

            "Oh, clearly."

            He glared at her.

            "You can't scare me, dear. The worst thing you can do is drop me in a pool of lava and you're way too much of a softie to even consider it."

            "You keep mocking me and I might consider it."

            "Tough guy, huh?"

            He narrowed his eyes, and the look she leveled on him was both condescending and disbelieving. It was a look only a mother could give, a look that dared him to keep pushing. He didn't have the energy to match her, so he just put his head back down.

            "You look tired."

            "You have _no_ idea."

            "There's a couch in the office," Su said thoughtfully. "You want to go--"

            "No," he snapped.

            Su was quiet for a moment, as though she had been stunned by the sudden aggression. She rubbed at his legs again. "All right, then. What are we going to do?"

            He shook his head. It seemed that was all he could do lately.

            "Can I leave you alone for a few minutes?"

            "If you're not too scared I'm going to throw myself out a window."

            "Oh, sarcasm. Very good." Su patted him on the calf and smiled. "I'm going to move your feet now, okay?"

            Bolin nodded. He wasn't sure what it mattered. But the moment she lifted his feet off of her thighs and put them on the ground he could feel the vibrations again, could feel them all again. He could feel Su in front of him. It was jarring and confusing, and he felt his forehead wrinkle as the sensations overwhelmed him.

            "You're going to have to fill me in about whatever is going on with that," Su said, and then she stood. "Give me five minutes before you jump, can you do that?"

            "I guess."

            "Good boy."

            She walked away, and Bolin sighed. He had hoped during the breakdown that he might feel better after it was done, but he didn't feel better at all. If it was possible, he felt worse. He felt weaker than he had when he first woke up; his head hurt worse, the tremors hadn’t stopped, his whole body seemed like it was going to fall apart. And somehow, he felt nauseous. He had no idea how. He hadn't eaten anything in what felt like days. But there was a distinctly uncomfortable sensation in his stomach that had gone beyond _hunger pangs_ and sat comfortably in the realm of _my stomach is eating itself_. It almost felt numb.

            He wondered what time it was. He was exhausted. He was freezing. He was sweating.

            "Oh, good. You're still here. No windows nearby?"

            He hadn't noticed Su returning. She'd spoken in relatively upbeat tones, and then sat in front of him again. Beneath one arm she'd tucked a throw pillow and a small blanket, and in the other hand she held a bowl of something hot. He could see the steam coming off it. She sat down before him, put the bowl on the ground beside her, and wrapped the blanket around his shoulders. It was an altogether motherly thing for her to do, and it made Bolin's stomach jerk with guilt.

            "If you're not going to go lay down, you'll have to sleep on the floor out here," she said as she situated herself. She tossed the pillow beside him and grabbed the bowl again. "Makes no difference to me where you sleep, really."

            "Better than a trash heap."

            "Good. You keep on with the sarcasm," she said. "At least when you're being sarcastic I know you're alive in there." She took an enormous bite of what looked like fancy, expensive noodles, then put the bowl down and regarded him curiously. "I hope you don't mind. I'm famished. I haven't eaten since noon." She grabbed his ankles and set his feet on her thighs, and then she grabbed her bowl and kept on. She felt content now; she felt _level._

            Bolin rested his chin on his arms. The smell of her food made the nausea worse.

            "You know, dear, some day I hope to have a man look at me the way you're looking at my food," she said after another few bites, and Bolin felt his face growing hot again. She'd said the words so plainly. He hadn't realized that he'd been staring like that. "Do you look at Opal that way?"

            The color drained from his face so fast it made him dizzy, and he practically slammed his forehead back into his arms.

            Su laughed at him.

            "It's not funny," he grumbled.

            "I think it's hilarious," Su replied. "Come on, now, here."

            When he looked up again, she was brandishing the bowl at him. He didn't take it.

            "See now, pretty quick my old lady arms are going to get tired and then you're going to have noodles all over you."

            He took the bowl and looked tentatively into it, and for a moment he wasn't sure exactly what he should do.

            "You do remember how to eat, don't you?"

            He glared at her again, but she just smiled that sadistic, motherly smile.

            "Don't look."

            "You're kidding," Su said, deadpan. Her smile had gone. "You are kidding, right?"

            "I'm not kidding. Don't look."

            With a great roll of her eyes, Su propped her elbows on his shins and dropped her face into her hands. "Ridiculous. A grown man like you too embarrassed to eat in front of a hag like me. Sure, you can eat off the same utensils as me, but perish the thought of me _watching_ you. I'm going to know if you dump it out, just so you're aware. I'm sitting right here. You can’t sneak it by me."

            He was too busy inhaling the food to listen to her mocking him. He didn't even taste it.

            "Slow down. You don't want to make yourself sick. I'm being serious."

            It was gone in less than two minutes, and for a while Bolin just sat there staring at the empty bowl and feeling more nauseous than he ever should have. He couldn't remember the last time he'd had a proper meal, not that a bowl of plain noodles really qualified as _proper_. It was a curious thing; how he felt like he wanted to eat another bowl at the same time he wanted to puke it all back up.

            He noticed Su watching him, and the familiar heat of embarrassment crept up on him again.

            "If you throw up on me I'm going to be upset."

            He couldn't help but look away shamefully as he handed the empty bowl back to her. Once she had taken it, he put his head back down, and she once again laid her hands on him. She rubbed the back of his head, patted him on the calf, and seemed content to sit in the quiet again for a long, long time. He'd begun to feel overwhelmingly tired by the next time she spoke. He was still cold. He was still sweating.

            "You still feel like jumping out a window?"

            "Maybe a little," he said. He sounded sleepy. He sounded sick. His words had slurred together.

            "You know, if you come to Zaofu you can jump off the domes."

            It was the closest thing to a genuine laugh he'd let go in a long time, a sharp exhalation through the nose, but it seemed to be enough for Su. He didn’t have the energy to muster much more than that, anyway. She went quiet again, and between his no-longer-empty stomach, her gentle maternal petting, and the comfortable weight of the blanket she'd found, he couldn't help but start to doze.

            "You want to lay down, sweetheart?"

            He couldn't even shake his head.

            He was just too tired.

 

*****

 

            The silence lasted for a while after Su came to scold them for standing at the door, and while Lin had eventually gone about her own business at Asami’s desk, Korra, Asami, and Opal had sat in awkward quiet on the sofa and the floor. The food Suyin and Opal had brought sat untouched. Korra, for her part, was too angry to eat, but Asami looked sad and Opal looked sick. She’d been clutching Pabu to her face for the last twenty minutes, sniffling into his tail while he whimpered at her.

            “Thought the brace was supposed to keep it in,” Korra grumbled after a while, at a loss for anything else to say to break the tense silence.

            “Well,” Asami replied, quiet but thoughtful, “it’s supposed to keep him from throwing it out while he’s earthbending. I didn’t really take trying to catch himself into account, being that earthbenders don’t generally just _fall down_.”

            Opal sighed heavily, and Pabu whimpered at her.

            “It’s not your fault, Opal,” Asami said, and she patted Opal’s back. “If the worst thing you’ve done to him is knock him over, you’re doing better than the rest of us.”

            “It looked so gross,” Opal said. There was a quiver in her voice.

            “Feels gross, too, when you put it back in for him,” said Lin from across the room.

Korra shuddered. She knew that firsthand.

            “So,” Opal said tentatively, and she lowered Pabu to her lap, “what exactly happened? Before mom and I got here?”

            Korra looked at Asami, and Asami looked at Korra, and neither one said a word. Korra wasn’t really sure where to begin on the matter. She wasn’t really sure what had made Bolin storm out into the hallway and start screaming at her, and she had only yelled back because she was so frustrated. It had only been a few minutes prior that Asami had come to explain to her and Lin about the conversation she’d had with him. She had barely gotten started when she had poked her head back into the hallway, and then it had all gone crazy.

            “I told him we were worried about him,” Asami said at last, “and he didn’t like it.”

“Clearly.”

            Lin’s quips were grating on Korra’s nerves.

            “I was trying to be diplomatic about it,” Asami continued, and she had begun to fidget, “but he called me out on everything. It was really weird. I tried to dodge a question and he just… _Knew_.”

            “Knew what?” Opal asked. She sounded a bit less ill now the conversation had turned more casual.

            Asami shrugged. “He knew that I was dodging the questions.”

The silence fell again.  And the silence lingered for a while. Korra listened as closely as she could toward the door, hoping to hear any kind of noise at all, but if Su and Bolin were speaking to each other there was no indication. At least he’d stopped yelling.

            “Girls, come eat,” Lin said. It was more an order than a request, and it wasn’t one that they were willing to disobey.

            It was an awkward dinner, all things considered, without much in the way of conversation. But the food was good, and for a while Korra felt able to relax as much as she could, knowing what was happening in the hallway.

            “So, what’s going on with you two anyway?” Asami asked suddenly, and she looked at Korra so directly that Korra’s stomach lurched. “With you and Bolin?”

            Korra was caught somewhere between choking on her noodles and spitting them back out. The question had come out of nowhere. “Nothing!” Korra cried. “What are you even talking about?”

            “Well, you’re just weird lately,” Asami continued. “I mean, I get why he’s weird. But it’s like…You’re avoiding each other one minute, then you’re okay with each other the next minute, and then you’re in a screaming match with each other. It’s just weird. You normally get along really well. Just seems like there’s a lot of tension lately.”

            “He started it,” Korra argued lamely. She didn’t really want to address the question head-on. What would she say, anyway? _I was avoiding him because he kissed me while he was delirious and I was too afraid at the time to tell if I liked it or not so I stayed away from him but then he didn’t seem to remember and I’m still not sure how I feel about the whole thing because every time he touches me I get all tingly_. Yeah. That would go over well, especially with Opal right there.

            And then Su came in, and they all went quiet as she collected items from the office.

“How is it?” Lin asked.

            Su sighed heavily as she slopped some of the noodles from the takeout container to a bowl. “Not great. You girls managed to give the poor guy the most serious panic attack I’ve ever seen.” She shot an accusing look to Korra, and Korra looked away. She didn’t want Su to be mad at her, too.

            “He talking?”

            “Oh, he’s talking, all right,” Su said, and Korra couldn’t tell if she sounded annoyed or surprised. “I don’t know what you girls said to him before we got here, but it didn’t do him any good. Just before I came in here he asked me if I was worried he’d jump out a window.”

            Korra watched the varied reactions. Asami’s face screwed up like she had eaten some bad food, Opal looked ready to cry again, and Pabu had begun eating out of her bowl. Lin, across the way, sat impassively at Asami’s desk, her eyebrow raised.

            “And you told him…?” Lin prompted.

            “I told him to give me five minutes before he jumps,” Su replied. She seemed a little too casual. Then, with articles in hand, she made her way back toward the hallway. “Keep away from the door. I mean it. I’m going to try and get him to eat something and if he knows you’re there listening he’s just going to clam up again, and then I’ll be angry, too.”

            Korra wondered how Bolin would know they were listening, but Su disappeared before she could ask. The silence took her place.

            For a while, Opal kept mentioning that she wanted to go help, but she remained firmly planted on the couch, as though she was afraid of what she might see. After a time, she seemed to have contented herself with Pabu, and the sick look about her had mostly gone. She just looked worried.

            Asami had begun to doze, herself, and Korra remained on the floor. She stared at her boots. All the meaningful conversation had gone, and aside from a few casual pleasantries and off-hand comments, the time passed in strained quiet.

            Korra couldn’t have said what time it was when Su came back in, but both Opal and Asami had long since fallen asleep. She imagined it was near midnight, and when she counted the hours the prediction seemed sound. She and Bolin had left Air Temple Island around noon, had gotten to the prison around two. He’d fainted just less than an hour after that, and the time since then had passed in a blur.

            Su tossed the now empty bowl onto Asami’s desk and slumped weakly into one of the armchairs, exhausted. Korra watched her the whole way, watched the expression on her face. She looked drawn, as though the whole ordeal had spread her too thin.

            “Well?” Lin said once Su had settled in.

            “He’s asleep.”

            “And you left him out there alone?”

            “Well, he’s been out for about an hour now, long enough for my legs to fall asleep, anyway, and hasn’t moved a muscle. I bet you could unload a swarm of screaming wolf-bats on him and he wouldn’t so much as twitch. I tried to get him to lie down but he wouldn’t budge. I don’t even know that he heard me. He’ll be sore when he wakes up if he doesn’t stretch out. He’s still all curled up, and I have no idea how he fell asleep like that.”

            Korra rose and crossed the room. Lin watched her the whole way, but Su seemed not to notice her until she’d flopped into an armchair of her own. “Anything happen?”

            Su shrugged. “He was talking, and that’s a fair stretch better than I thought he’d be doing. He ate. He laughed at me.”

            “Oh?” Lin said skeptically.

            “Okay, it wasn’t so much a laugh as it was a snort. Well, he breathed harder, anyway, and I’ll take it.”

            “How?” Korra asked.

            Su grinned mischievously. “Made a few off-color jokes at him. Told him he could jump off the domes at Zaofu if he comes home with me and decides living isn’t worth the effort.”

            Lin looked suddenly ready to snap, and her reaction made Korra feel just slightly better. Lin had most definitely developed a soft spot.

            “Mom?”

            Korra looked over the back of her armchair to see Opal getting to her feet, Pabu curled around the back of her neck, and for the first time it struck Korra as odd how comfortable Pabu was with her. In Bolin’s absence, the fire ferret hadn’t left her side once. There was a look on her face of utmost concern, and she glanced toward the door twice before Su ever had the chance to answer.

            “He’s fine, Opal,” Su said, exasperated. “And don’t you dare think about going out there and risk waking him up.”

            She pouted, but came to sit on the floor all the same. She leaned against Su’s legs and dropped her chin on her hand.

            “You didn’t have to get up,” Su said to her. “Nothing’s going to happen for a while. It was probably better for you to sleep.”

            “I don’t want to sleep.”

            “How’d you get him to eat?” Korra asked after a bit. “He’s been refusing everything that I know of for as long as I can remember.”

            Now Su laughed. “I ate it first,” she said, “and he was just staring at me, so I asked him if he looked at Opal the same way he was looking at my food. I think he was so embarrassed that he took it just to get me to stop making fun of him.”

            Opal turned about immediately, her eyes wide and her face the lightest shade of pink. “What?”

            Su patted her on the shoulder placidly. “You don’t have to be embarrassed,” she said. “Don’t forget, I was your age once, and I was a troublemaker. I know what twenty-year-olds do. Besides, I guarantee I did far worse things than the two of you have done.”

            “I wouldn’t count on that,” Lin replied dryly, and at once, Opal and Su both looked at her, and both wore the same shocked expression. Opal had gone scarlet. But Lin didn’t say another word. Then they looked to Korra like they expected her to fill in the blanks. Korra certainly remembered Lin saying something about Bolin divulging all the details of his and Opal’s personal affairs to her during his delirium, but she had never known exactly what that had included. She shrugged.

            For a while, they all sat in the quiet.

            “Well,” Su sighed sleepily after a while, and she made to rise from her chair, “we ought to get ourselves squared away and get some rest here. We’ve all got a busy few days ahead of us and—“

            The door opened with force, and Pabu skittered startled from Opal’s shoulder. Being that she was half up already, Su was the first to look mortified toward the noise.

            “Oh, dear,” she said.

            Then Opal was on her feet, and then Korra was on her feet, and even across the room Asami had roused at the sudden noise and was staring dumbfounded from the sofa. Given Su’s explanation, no one expected Bolin to be up and moving about so urgently so soon. More, no one expected him to head directly for the waste bin beside the door.

            He retched.

            Korra had to look away with a grimace; else she would be sick herself. The sound alone turned her stomach.  But it was done as quickly as it had begun and a dread silence hung in the interim. When Korra looked back toward him, he was leaning against the wall staring confusedly into the bin. She could see his back heaving with shallow breaths.

            He looked like death.

            “Well,” he said in a voice so weak that Korra could hear the wavering, “that’s not good.”

            And he kept staring. Korra could see him shaking. He stumbled clumsily but caught himself before he fell. Suddenly, Korra felt an overwhelming sense of disaster. It was the same feeling she’d had at the combustion bender’s cell, and it rooted her feet to the spot and caused her breath to catch in her throat.

            “That… That’s really not good…” Bolin repeated. He looked like death. He sounded like death. He sounded like he was going to throw up again. His words had slurred. He was white as a sheet. And then, after a few more moments spent staring into the bin, he looked directly at Suyin. He seemed not to see anyone else. He seemed not to see at all. With an incredible effort he managed to stammer, “Something’s wrong…”

            There was something terrifying in his voice that Korra could never have articulated, a combination of weakness and horror and helplessness and _realization_ that let her know in no uncertain terms that she wasn’t the only one feeling the sense of impending doom. In the seconds immediately following his statement, Bolin looked at the ground vacantly, then looked at his shaking hands, and then seemed to sway.

            He swallowed very hard, and touched his hand to his chest.

            “…I’m going to fall down…”

            The room sprang back to life. Su practically vaulted the chair to rush toward him, Opal let out a cry of fright and sprinted after her, and even Asami had gotten to her feet and seemed ready to jump into action. Korra hadn’t even thought to move. It was as though her brain had frozen. Her whole body had gone numb.

            Even as she watched, Korra couldn’t be sure if Bolin had collapsed against Su or if she had grabbed him before his legs gave out, but they both sank heavily to the ground and remained very still. They were _too_ still. They were too quiet.  Suyin was just staring at him. And Opal was staring at Su, slumped with her hands cupped over her face.

            Everyone else seemed as outsiders intruding on a horrible, intimate moment.

            “Opal, get his feet up,” Su ordered in a voice so calm it gave Korra goosebumps, and Opal complied at once. She threw herself to the ground and propped Bolin’s feet on her knees, and at the same time Su laid him back. She propped his head on her crossed legs. And then Su began gently calling his name, shaking him, calling his name, shaking him.

            He didn’t move.

  



	20. Complicated Orders

            Mako spent days in a haze of disbelief and mourning made tolerable only by the company of others and the inexplicable desire to appear in control. In the daylight hours he worked with his quad to train and work and plan for their inevitable deployment, and most nights he spent with Toru. He didn't know when, but at some point she had become something of a fixture in his day. She always seemed to be nearby when he needed her, and she never seemed to tire of his constant prattling.

            She had become comfortable.

            The relationship was not necessarily a secret, and they didn't try to hide their involvement with one another. There could be no secrets in the dormitory so there was no point in trying. Most nights they met after dinner, walked outside, talked, and retired back to the apartment well after hours to lay on the bed and talk some more. At first they were subject to strange looks and derisive glares, but over time they faded. At first, Bingwei mocked them when he was present, but then he slowly stopped, and eventually he began to afford them some private space.

            They had become comfortable.

            Over the course of several very late nights Mako had laid himself bare for her, explaining the loss of his parents, his time on the street, his relationship with Bolin. He divulged memories to her that he'd not discussed in many years, memories that he imagined even Bolin had forgotten over time. It had been, in a certain way, cathartic for him. It had provided release where he could find nothing else. It helped him cope. And Toru listened without judgment, even when he explained his failed relationship with Avatar Korra.

            When Mako's story had been told, Toru told her own in the same detail. Mako learned about her past, her family, her struggles with bending, her engagement to the man who would eventually become the leader of what Mako had once believed to be the greatest terrorist organization in the world. Through it all she insisted that she _had been_ his fiancée, as though it was a thing of the past, but she never once explained what had happened to sever the bond. She never explained why she still traveled with him, and Mako never asked her to. It wasn't his place.

            His relationship with Toru was not the only one that had grown stronger. Whether he wanted to or not, he'd begun to fill the void that Bolin's death had opened in him. Yaozhu had settled into the place that Bolin once filled, and the occupation had happened quite suddenly. For days Mako had remained distant. For days he had said only the words that were required of his station, only the words that were required to make it through the day and get back to his apartment. But then Yaozhu had asked him what had been troubling him lately, and the way he'd asked the question reminded Mako so much of Bolin that he broke again.

            Every perception Mako once held about combustion benders in general had been disproved by Yaozhu alone. He was gentle and soft spoken, eager to please others, upbeat and optimistic. He was like a small, firebending Bolin, and that alone was endearing. The degree to which the two were similar was striking, particularly when Yaozhu screwed up and spouted stammering apologies, or when he tried to crack a joke at the most inappropriate times. Mako scolded him, yes, but inwardly he appreciated the attempts at levity.

            More, Mako had been given the opportunity to meet with more combustion benders outside of his own group, and every one he met treated him genially. They were an agreeable lot, if a little remote, and offered advice not only to Yaozhu in his training, but to the rest of Mako's quad in matters of all kinds. Certainly they looked a bit weird, and whenever he saw the various tattoos on their foreheads Mako still felt the slightest twang of nervousness, but there was no hint of the bloodthirstiness he'd seen in P'li. There was no indication that any of them were actually insane, as he had once believed all combustion benders to be. They were people, the same as him, and they were just trying to get by.

            It was in the second week of his captaincy that Yaozhu divulged to Mako that he had once had an older brother who had been deployed to Republic City more than a month prior. Yaozhu hadn't heard from him since, and had started to believe that he might've died in service to the society. In that moment, Mako realized that he wasn't the only one with voids to fill, and it completely solidified his position as the brotherly authority figure amongst his quad.

            Even Jing and Fa had opened to him a bit. Certainly they remained more guarded than Yaozhu had done, but they had been more skeptical to begin with. After a time they began to let loose, they began to speak more freely and engage more completely in their training, and they began to try harder to fulfill their assignments. Fa seemed to drop his perpetually suspicious attitude toward all things Mako did, and Jing began physical training in earnest. He'd dropped twelve pounds already and seemed to have been in a better mood than anyone had ever seen before.

            Mako swelled with pride when a notice came to him praising him for leading one of the most efficient groups in the system, and he had taken the risk of inviting the others for an absolutely luxurious dinner in the dormitory kitchens. No one said anything about the fact that Mako had brought inferiors into the officers’ mess hall, and after their meal, they retired to Mako's apartment for further celebrations. Toru had joined them late in the evening, and in a moment that Mako could never hope to explain, he'd kissed her for the first time.

            Mako had become so lost in the feeling of communion that he had all but forgotten the idea of _home_. This was his home now, these people were his family, and the more he accepted those truths the more whole he felt. He stopped counting the days since he'd been taken. He allowed himself to stop feeling conflicted and allowed himself to enjoy the companionship of others. He started smiling again. He could laugh and actually mean it. He felt in control. He had a purpose.

            Then the day came when his mettle was tested.

            "Courier delivered a letter for you this morning."

            Mako had still been reclined in his bed, not yet completely awake, when Bingwei had produced the note and tossed it at him. He stared at it for a few seconds before picking it up to examine it more closely. It looked official. It looked _extremely_ official, with flowing script and a metallic red seal holding it closed.

            "Who's it from?" he asked.

            "How should I know? I'm not your errand boy."

            "No, but you're the one who delivered it to me."

            "Shut up and read it."

            Mako opened the letter. He stared at the words on the page for a few minutes before he was actually able to comprehend them.

            "Well?" Bingwei prompted.

            "Not your business," Mako quipped, and he folded the letter again, "being that you're not my errand boy."

            "Watch the attitude. I'm a superior."

            "Says the guy who delivered me a letter."

            Mako tossed the letter to Bingwei and rose from the bed to prepare for the day.

            "Addressed to quad leader four zero five... You got a _number?_ " Bingwei asked.

            "Apparently." Mako didn't know what exactly the number meant, but he'd heard that being assigned one was an extremely good thing.

            "Quad leader four zero five has been summoned to a formal meeting with His Excellency at eighteen hundred hours on this twelfth day of..." Bingwei trailed off, then shot Mako an extraordinarily surprised look. "And you've been _summoned_? This soon?"

            Mako shrugged and grabbed his clothes from the dresser. "Apparently. Now move, I want a shower."

            "Late night with your lady?"

            "Shut up."

            As Mako walked past, Bingwei smacked him hard on the shoulder, laughed, and said, "Somebody's grouchy."

            But Mako wasn't. In fact, he couldn't help but feel a bit prideful. Bingwei hadn't even been given a number. More, he was going to a formal meeting with the head of the society, which by anyone's reckoning was an exceptional honor.

            It wasn't until halfway through his shower that the truth of that matter finally hit him, and all the confusion and conflict he'd felt before came rushing back. But now things were complicated.

            He'd known for some time that he was going to be sent to Republic City. Toru had told him that as plain as day. But he had never known exactly _when_ he was going to go, nor how he was going to get there, nor who was going to go with him. He had the most vague idea of what he was _supposed_ to do once he arrived, but didn't know what he actually _would_ do. His orders, if Toru was to be believed (and she was) would be to contact the leaders of the various Triad groups and convince them to join with the society. But his mission--the mission he had once thought about and then had recessed to the back of his mind--was to find out as much information as he could about the society and report it back to Beifong.

            He wondered if he could do both.

            It wasn't so much that he felt any particular allegiance to the society in general. When he thought on the matter, he felt angry toward them, a general hostility which could only be explained by the fact that they had tried to kill him in Ba Sing Se, tried to brainwash and condition him in the camp, took all non-firebenders hostage and used them for nefarious ends, and, perhaps worst of all, had apparently killed Bolin. But the people who had done those terrible things weren't the people with whom Mako spent most of his time. They were shadow people, people he never saw and never spoke to, and people who never saw him or spoke to him.

            Except now they’d be speaking to him directly.

            It was with remarkable nervousness that Mako went through the motions of his day with his quad. He informed them quite early on that he would be meeting with His Excellency that evening for a private meeting in which he suspected they would all be given formal orders and deployed. The others, particularly Yaozhu, responded gleefully.

            He was so nervous about the matter that he took a second shower. And then the time had come for him to go.

            The notice had said that an envoy would be waiting for him in the foyer at twenty minutes before six, who would escort him to the hitherto unmentioned meeting place, and he could see said envoy before he ever went down the stairs. After all, why else would someone be standing around by himself in the entryway to the dormitory in a uniform that didn't match the rest?

            There were no greetings. The envoy simply said, "Follow me," and Mako followed.

            Interestingly enough, they did not leave the building as Mako had suspected they might. Instead, the envoy led him down the same hallway he'd tried to investigate on his own once before. This time, however, he wasn't subjected to the glares.

            This corridor was the same as the upstairs corridors, a direct copy of his own, except that the door at the end--the door through which he was taken--did not lead to a common bathroom. It didn't lead to a bathroom at all.

            It led to a basement. Which led to a door. Which led to a roughly hewn tunnel. Which led to a larger network of tunnels that appeared to weave and dive and interconnect as an enormous underground web. As he walked, Mako tried to mark the directions, but he couldn't seem to gain his bearings. They snaked about seemingly without direction for a solid fifteen minutes before an ornate door presented itself, beyond which another staircase rose toward the surface.

            Mako reasoned that the purpose of these tunnels was to keep locations a secret. He reasoned that this was what the captive earthbenders had been set to do. He reasoned that each building in the compound must have been connected to the network. No one could attack the leader if they didn't know exactly where he was, and he imagined that the leader would need all the protection he could get, given that he'd lost his bending and seemed to have no other means to protect himself. Any combustion bender who wanted could blow him up from half a mile away with little more than a thought.

            At the top of the staircase was another basement, though this one seemed in far better repair than the one in his building. There were carpets and tapestries and the general Fire Nation propaganda that he'd seen everywhere else, except instead of looking old and worn out, the decorations seemed new and well cared for.

            The basement was a storage space, Mako recognized, because the walls were lined with barrels and boxes and bags, which he imagined contained the food and other supplies that ran the island as a whole. He wondered from where the items were imported.

            As soon as they began the climb from the basement, Mako could smell food, and all at once he realized how hungry he'd been. He'd not considered that this might be a dinner, and a nervousness came into him that he'd not expected. There was something intimate about a meeting over dinner. There was something significantly more personal about it. Plus, to date, his table manners had suffered as a result of taking most of his meals alone. He hadn't eaten with anyone except for his quadmates in a long time, and none of them seemed particularly well mannered themselves.

            For the first time in a long time, he forced himself to think of his life before the society, when he ate semi-formal dinners on Air Temple Island with Avatar Korra, when he ate more-than-semi-formal dinners with Wu while acting as his one-man security force. It wasn't a difficult task, if he kept to the rules: Eat only after the others had started, and eat at their pace. Speak only when spoken to directly. Laugh when others laugh. Be silent when they are silent. Certainly if he followed the lead of whoever else sat at the table with him, he would be fine.

            He'd been so caught up in his self-coaching that he hadn't realized that he'd entered the dining hall. The envoy had stopped at the door, motioned Mako to continue on, and then had disappeared.

            In the center of the enormous room sat a large round table upon which were heaped foods that Mako had grown to find familiar: dumplings and tiny komodo chickens and brown and white rices and sausages and breads, and even the same smoked sea slug he'd regretted eating on his first day as a captain. It was a veritable feast.

            Around the table sat five men.

            It was not the first time that Mako had seen Guan clearly, but it the first time that Mako had seen him up close. He was altogether younger than Mako would have believed, and he was well manicured in every way. There wasn't a single wrinkle in his clothes; there wasn't a single hair out of place. He looked every bit the typical firebender, with pale skin, yellow-orange eyes, and dark hair. He cast an austere aura, an aspect of clear command, but Mako could tell that beneath all of that was something darker.

            "Welcome," Guan said coolly, and he met Mako's eyes with a strong, superior gaze of his own. "Please sit."

            Mako sat. Anger tugged faintly at his stomach. This was the man who'd had Bolin killed.

            "Now we're all here, we can begin," Guan said again. "Gentlemen, help yourselves."

            The order went against all the table manners Mako had ever learned. He watched, somewhat dumbfounded, as the men at Guan's sides heaped their plates with their preferences and Guan sat impassively, watching them.

            Mako suddenly didn't feel very hungry. He suddenly felt a little bit scared and a little bit nauseous. But it seemed nobody noticed him, and within a few minutes the five had tucked in to their meals without much reservation.

            "Well," Guan said after a time, "I suppose we're here to talk, so we should." Then he spoke directly to Mako. "You'll have to forgive the informality, but we five already know each other fairly well. These men are my council, my advisors, who work with me to promote the well being of the members of our society. They assist me in delegating tasks and determining where our services are most needed."

            Mako nodded dumbly.

            "Gentlemen," Guan continued, and now he looked at his companions, "this is quad leader four zero five. His name is Mako."

            "He's young for a fourth division," said the man directly to Guan's left. "Don't you think?"

            "Absolutely not," Guan replied generously. "He's well suited to the task."

            Mako wasn't sure what to think. He felt as though he should know exactly what _fourth division_ meant. He didn't know that the numbers had any significance outside of identification. He felt very self-conscious.

            "Fourth division are diplomats," Guan explained coolly. It seemed he'd noticed the look on Mako's face. "Your quad will be doing diplomatic work once you're deployed."

Again, Mako nodded.

            "Four zero five indicates that you are the fifth quad in the fourth division. Of course, you're their captain, which is why you're sitting here now. This meeting is to discuss your deployment."

            It seemed he'd never stop nodding his head, and Mako felt stupid.

            "Your commander told me that you didn't speak much," Guan said, and this time he smiled broadly. It was an entirely attractive smile, a smile that oozed charisma and confidence. It was no wonder people blindly followed him, between his looks and his ability to speak. He was incredibly articulate. "You're allowed to speak freely here. We eat as equals. Now, please help yourself."

            Mako took a bowl of rice and nibbled at it tentatively.

            "Very good. Now, I hope you wouldn't mind answering a few of my questions," Guan said, and when Mako shook his head, he continued. "Can you tell us about your life in Republic City?"

            "What about it?" Mako hadn't meant the words to come out quite so boldly. He didn't feel the way he'd sounded, and he didn't miss the meaningful look the others exchanged.

            "Your affiliation with the Triads, if you don't mind."

            Mako took an enormous bite from his rice to bide a little time. He had to be very careful how he played his cards. For all these men knew, Mako was completely loyal. They believed that he had been _fully assimilated_. And on one hand, he did feel loyalty in a way, to his quad and to Toru and maybe even a little to Bingwei, but there was no loyalty at this table. The longer he looked at the men here, the more outrage he felt. These people had orchestrated the murder of his little brother.

            Still, he had to get back to Republic City. He had to talk to Beifong. He had to let her know what was going on.

            "I was pretty young when I worked with them," he said thoughtfully. "I was ten when I started and I quit when I was about sixteen."

            "And what was your job during those years?"

            Mako shrugged, ate more rice. Now that he was putting food in his stomach, he was beginning to feel hungry again. "Pushed papers for a little while, ran numbers and did some accounting."

            "At eleven?"

            "Yeah. What of it?"

            At once Mako had regretted his tone, and it seemed he made a face that let the others know. Guan smiled his perfect smile.

            "Don't worry about it," he said. "You're likely the most civilized person we'll entertain at this table for the next few months. Please feel at ease here. I can't stress to you enough that this meeting is a formality only. It's a chance for us to get to know each other."

            Mako wasn't sure what he meant by that, but he took it as permission. "I did the books because I knew the math."

            "Seems like they could've found someone more mature to handle that duty for them. Bookkeeping is an important task for those kinds of organizations, after all."

            "I didn't just keep the books."

            "Ah, so you...?"

            "Ran errands. Sent messages," Mako explained between bites. "My brother and I could go where other people couldn't." He hadn't even thought about mentioning Bolin. The memory made his stomach jump, and when it settled there remained a cold lump of grief.

            "Can you explain a little more?" said the man to Guan's right. "About your duties and why you were given them? Specifically?"

            "Well, the Triple Threats had to communicate with one another, whether it was a deal or a job or whatever," Mako said casually. "Being they were all over the city, they couldn't just telephone each other publicly, they had to send their messages through covert lines. And my brother and I were those covert lines. Like I said, we could go places where others couldn't."

            "Exactly what does that mean?" Guan asked. "That you could go where others couldn't?"

            "Well, I suppose it's a matter of who people pay attention to. Someone sees a grown man wandering the streets and they're going to notice him, especially if he looks like he's homeless. They're going to be a little bit wary and pay more attention to where he's going and what he's doing. He might attract the attention of police, if he's in the wrong place at the wrong time. But kids? Young kids? Nobody cares about them. Nobody pays attention to them because they think the kids are stupid or aren't paying attention. We could walk up to a person and eavesdrop on a fifteen-minute conversation and nobody would think anything of it. Nobody would look at us twice. We could go into those _wrong places_ and come out just fine because nobody saw us as a threat. So the Triad leaders would send us."

            "Smart on their part to notice something like that."

            "They didn't," Mako said smugly. "I did. Well, that's not true. Bolin did, but I told them about it because he was too scared to speak up. He was only eight."

            "Bolin being your brother," said another of the men. They all seemed to be taking turns asking questions and commenting on his answers. But Mako had been staring down at his empty bowl, thinking about how much he hated these people. He was thinking about how much he missed his brother. He just nodded.

            "What was your relationship with the leaders?"

            Mako shrugged. "I guess it was good. They kept bugging us to do more work after we bailed. But we didn't have a reputation, if that's what you mean. We kept things quiet, and the bosses liked that."

            "You continued living in Republic city after you stopped working for the Triads, according to our initial interview. Are the same men in charge as when you worked for them?"

            Mako's face screwed up in disbelief. "Of course not," he said. Then he relaxed. He had to keep his head. "Leaders don't stay around for long in the Triads," he explained. "Lots of infighting and competition, and in a mob like that, it gets violent. Besides, a bunch of them were taken out with the whole Equalist fiasco, and that pretty much eliminated all the guys I knew of."

            He didn't know if he'd done it on purpose, but Mako realized that he'd looked straight at Guan when he'd mentioned the Equalists. He hoped that he hadn't been too transparent. He imagined that he was the only one outside of Guan's inner circle to know about his lack of bending, and that was only thanks to his and Toru's relationship. And he had no idea if anyone in the inner circle knew about _that_.

            There was a tense silence, during which the five men opposite Mako looked at each other. Mako tried not to make it obvious that he was watching them. He scooped another spoonful of rice into his bowl and ate.

            "What do you think of things here?" Guan asked at last.

            Mako raised an eyebrow, but he didn't say anything.

            "Ah, skepticism. Let me elaborate. You came to us under fairly traumatic circumstances. I met you very early on and it seemed that you weren't coping well. It's very important to me that all of our citizens are happy and fulfilled. I want to know what you think about our society in order to help make your life here more enjoyable."

            Mako still didn't speak.

            "You're afraid to speak openly?"

            "You were closer with skepticism," Mako said. "I'm not _afraid_ of you. You don’t intimidate me."

            Guan reclined in his chair and folded his hands behind his head. He'd taken on a new expression now, an expression that suggested to Mako that he was trying to analyze him, trying to read him, to understand. It was a look of most subtle surprise. Mako wondered if anyone had said such a thing to this man before.

            "Why should you think I want to intimidate you?"

            Now Mako assumed a similar position, the food all but forgotten.

            "Why else would you drag me to a place, not tell me where it is, sit me down in front of a panel of old men, and ask me the types of questions you are? You can play at being friendly all you want, but a guy like you doesn't get to the top by being nice."

            "Astute." Guan shared a look with the other men, and he gave the tiniest nod of his head. "I'd like to offer you an assignment, if you'd be willing to hear me out."

            This was it, Mako thought. He seemed to have passed whatever test this was. No, he must have passed it well before he ever set foot in this room. No one would be allowed near this man if they weren't absolutely certain of his loyalty.

            "Go ahead," Mako said. He'd meant the words to be at least slightly inviting, but his voice remained hard.

            "I would like you to lead your quad in a mission to Republic City proper. We've been trying to get the Triads on board with us to act as informants, but it's been difficult to communicate with them. They don't take very kindly to people who aren't already affiliated with them. They don't welcome outsiders. Since you seem to have an in, I would like you to work diplomatically to get them to commit."

            "How?"

            "That much is up to you."

            "And what do I get in return for doing the job?" Mako said boldly. "Seems like an awfully important task you're setting for me, I think I'm entitled to some repayment for completing it."

            The appraising look came back again, and Guan stared at Mako for a while in silence. Mako wondered if he'd overstepped his bounds, but to this point it seemed he'd been rewarded every time he toed the line. It seemed that a certain degree of brashness was appreciated in this place, like it was a trait to be admired.

            "What would you have?" Guan asked at last.

            Mako hadn't necessarily thought on the matter. But the words came to him at once. "There's a girl I've seen around you. Water tribe by the looks of it. I'd like her."

            Guan's eyes went wide, his brows raised. It was a look of clear, unmasked surprise that told Mako he'd not expected _that_ to be the price. But Toru had said so many times how she hated being around Guan. She hated being his trophy. She wanted to be free.

            "She's the same one that healed me when I first came to you. She took good care of me then, and I think the one thing I'm missing here is a partner. Every other officer seems to have the girl of their choice, don't they? Even the ones without numbers all have partners waiting for them. I'd like mine. I think I've been more than patient about it."

            Guan didn't say anything, but his eyes had gone very narrow. He folded his hands and rested his chin atop his knuckles. "There are a number of girls who are available already."

            Mako shrugged. "Not my type."

            "You're picky, then."

            "No, I just know what I want." Mako crossed his arms and reclined himself, confident. "If you don't want to, it seems like you've left me the option to say no to your mission. After all, this was a friendly, get to know each other meeting, wasn't it? No pressure here."

            "Let me clarify," said Guan dangerously. "You _will_ be going to Republic City. The choice isn't yours."

            "Ah. I get it. But weren't you just telling me that you wanted me to be happy here? You wanted your officers to be comfortable? You want my life to be enjoyable? Good morale makes for good troops, doesn't it, Sir?"

            "It does."

            "Besides, I can't imagine what a powerful man like you would want with a water tribe girl. I figure you keep her around for healing. That's about all they're good for."

            "Then what do you want her for?"

            Mako smirked and cast his gaze downward. "I said that's _about_ all they're good for."

            Guan bristled, and Mako knew he'd ruffled him.

            "I'm more than happy to go talk to the Triad leaders for you. I'll walk in with open arms. But I don't think it's unreasonable to have a bit of reward when I come home."

            The icy stare came again, but Mako didn't back down.

            "All right. Let's make a deal."

            "You're in no position to barter."

            "Neither are you."

            The other men rose, apparently offended by Mako's daring, and they took stances as though they were about to firebend at him. But Guan stayed seated and narrow-eyed, and he said to them, "Stand down," and they sat. "You convince _all_ of the Triad leaders to join with us, and I'll give her to you. If you fail, I’ll kill you. It’s as simple as that."

            He'd said the words so plainly that Mako didn't know how to react. "What?"

            "You're right," Guan said, and his face seemed to have relaxed a bit. "I have no room to barter, either. I've made it clear to you that I've been unsuccessful in acquiring the Triads. I've already said that you're my best option. Why should I lie? Let’s work together to better both our stations, yes? If you do as I ask, I'll gladly give you the girl, but if you fail in your mission, you'll have little and less. Consider it incentive for a job well done."

            "So," Mako said uncertainly, "you're agreeing to my terms?"

            Guan shrugged and stood. "I've got no attachment to the girl outside of private healing, and there are plenty of perfectly capable healers around. She can be your plaything if you really want her to be. Prepare your men and your strategy, four zero five, you'll be deploying in three days."


	21. Departure

            Bolin remembered the dream. He remembered the lava ocean, the combustion benders, the helpless citizens of the Ba Sing Se that wasn't Ba Sing Se sinking in agony toward immeasurable depths. He remembered casting the wave down. He had set it against the combustion benders at his own expense.

            He remembered being crushed.

            The whole world had gone dark beneath the colossal wave, and even when he tried to open his eyes he couldn't see. He could feel, though. He could feel the terror of the people who weren't people, those who had sunk beneath the waves and conveyed their horror through strange vibrations in the earth. He could hear shouting and crying, but the sounds were distorted as though he was under water. Through it all, he thought he could hear someone calling his name.

            It was all black. It was all hazy. He couldn't focus his senses. All he could do was lay helpless beneath the cooling rock and feel its enormous weight bearing down on him. His breaths came in slow shallow gasps, and his heartbeat, the heartbeat he'd felt so strong before, had slowed and weakened so that the time between breaths and beats seemed to last forever.

            In the dark dream, he thought about Mako, about the corpse he had seen and the burial and the explosion and his own subsequent hysteria in trying to find the culprit. He'd been so driven. But then he’d fallen apart. He'd been attacked. His brain had stopped working, had stopped focusing on the things that should have been important. He'd all but forgotten. He thought of a time outside of the dream, a time he couldn't have measured in his wildest imagination, when _someone_ had said _something_ about finding Mako. He remembered the words: _What happens if we find Mako?_ They rolled over and over in his mind.

            _Bring him back._

            _It'll be a pleasant surprise_.

            Someone was calling his name.

            It sounded like Mako. But it had been so long since Bolin had heard his brother's voice that he couldn't be sure. He couldn't place the sound. He couldn't remember Mako's voice. He wasn't even sure he could remember Mako's face.

            He hated himself.

            All at once the hardening ground seemed to shift around him. It was an earthquake. He knew. He could feel it in the vibrations. It shook his whole body and forced him to catch his breath. Then it quaked again, stronger this time, and Mako's voice came in more clearly.

            He had to find him.

            He had to bring him home.

            Mako was calling his name.

            Another quake. The call strengthened. Something was pulling him from beneath the rock. Someone was lifting the pressure.

            He could breathe.

            Mako was calling his name.

 

            Bolin woke with a gasp so sharp it stung, and before he ever registered that he was lying down or that half a dozen people had crowded around him, he bolted upright.

            Or he tried to.

            Someone was holding him down, a pair of steely strong hands planted firmly on his shoulder and the middle of his chest. A second pair grasped his ankles. Another pair held his wrists. They were cold. They were all cold. He fought against them. All he wanted to do was sit up.

            "Stay down, son."

            Bolin looked around at faces that seemed utterly foreign. He blinked, confused, and willed his eyes to focus, but they darted about uncontrolled. It made him dizzy. Or was that the pressure in his chest? Or was it the enormous weight pinning him to the floor?

            He panicked and pulled against the restraints, but he made no headway. Whatever had pinned him was too strong. Or he was too weak. He didn't know.

            He closed his eyes and tugged against it again.

            "You can't go back to sleep."

            It was the same voice that had told him to stay down. It was the same one that had pulled him from the dream, the same one he'd mistaken for Mako.

            It wasn't Mako.

            "Open your eyes." A different voice. A soft voice.

            Someone was crying.

            "Asami, now." A tense, brusque voice.

            Bolin was too panicked to register the words, and as he pulled futilely against the hands it seemed that someone was trying to force something to his lips. He jerked away, terrified.

            "Hold him!" A desperate, frightened voice.

            Yet another pair of hands grabbed him and held his head firmly in place. Their palms clamped over his ears like a metal vise. He gasped again, tried to find his strength again, but was caught off guard when the liquid came in. Someone's hand clapped over his mouth, someone's fingers pinched his nose, and suddenly he couldn't breathe. He was going to drown. He was going to suffocate.

            He swallowed, and the hands let go. He coughed pitifully.

            Then it happened again, and he thought he would drown again. And then a third time. And a fourth. And a fifth.

            By the time it stopped all the fight had gone out of him. There wasn't enough energy to pull away, to resist against whatever bonds were holding him to the ground. There wasn't enough energy to sustain the panic. So, he just laid there, listening to the incoherent mumbling and struggling to breathe. He laid there and listened to Opal crying.

            And then it hit him.

            Opal.

            Opal was crying.

            Bolin opened his eyes again and looked between the people with new recognition. Lin's blurry face floated directly over his own, upside-down, and Su was beside her. And Tenzin was opposite Su.

            When had he gotten there?

            Korra and Asami sat at his waist. He could see Opal crying at his feet with Pabu cuddled around her neck, and now he had stopped struggling she pressed her forehead into his knees and wrapped her arms around his legs. She hugged him as tightly as she could.

            An entirely new kind of terror flooded his mind. What had just happened? When did he end up on the floor? Last thing he remembered he'd thrown up. Last thing he remembered his body had begun feeling heavy. And then he was in the dream.

            "Oh, thank goodness," Su said, and her head dropped with what looked to Bolin like exhaustion. Her voice was shaking. "Thank goodness..."

            "I wouldn't be thanking anything yet," Lin said, and then she looked down at him. "Can you understand me, kid?"

            Bolin nodded, and though his head moved only a fraction of an inch, the motion took enormous energy. He felt so tired.

            "Good. You know what happened?"

            He shook his head no.

            "You passed out. Again. Came in here and puked, grabbed your chest, then dropped like a sack of bricks. We thought your heart stopped."

            Bolin just stared at her.

            "What's he at now?" Su asked, and Lin tucked her fingers under Bolin's chin, pressed them against his throat, and waited. "Is it better?"

            "Fifty-five," said Lin after a few seconds. "Definitely better than it was." She looked down at him. "When you went down it was at thirty."

            "Fifty-five is still low," Tenzin remarked.

            Bolin wondered again when Tenzin had shown up.

            "You were gone for a while," Lin continued. "We didn't think you were coming back. We couldn't get anything into you."

            Opal sobbed harder. He could feel her trembling through his feet.

            "Look, I need you to answer some questions, and I need you to level with me. No lying. No trying to dodge. You'll be in more trouble if you lie to me than you will if you say something we don't like. Do you understand?"

            Bolin nodded.

            "You told Asami you ate last night, right?"

            He nodded again.

            “Did you really?”

            He nodded again.

            "Did you keep it down?"

            For the tiniest moment, Bolin's brow furrowed. Why was she asking him this? Was she trying to shame him again? How many times did they have to rub his nose in his failures?

            "Did you keep it down?" Lin seemed on the edge of angry.

            He shook his head no.

            Lin, Su, and Tenzin exchanged very worried, very parental looks.

            "You didn't eat anything else yesterday?" Su asked gently, and again Bolin shook his head.

            "The day before?" Tenzin asked.

            No.

            "The day before that?"

            No.

            He'd forgotten.

            He hadn't been hungry.

            It hadn't been on purpose.

            He just didn't want to keep puking. Or feeling like he was going to.

            The familiar heat of embarrassment came back when they exchanged another meaningful look, except this time he didn't have the energy to hide it.

            "Four days," Lin said, and she spoke as if Bolin couldn't hear her, like he wasn't even present. " _At least_ four days. It's no wonder things went south so fast. If I'd had any idea I wouldn't have had him lavabending. I wouldn't have had him out of bed at all." Then she looked back down at him. "You kept down _anything_ solid lately?"

            No.

            Opal sobbed.

            "You making yourself puke?"

            Confused, Bolin just laid there, staring at her.

            "Are you doing it on purpose?" Lin asked again, and this time it was exceptionally stern. She spoke with intentional clarity, with emphasis on every single word.

            No.

            "You kept down any liquids?"

            Yes.

            "Good, that's a start, anyway. Asami, Korra, I want more of whatever it was you gave him earlier. Now. Bring it all."

            Bolin felt them let go his wrists, and he watched them rise and depart. He looked at Opal, still crying. He wanted to sit up and comfort her, but when he tried Tenzin pushed him gently back down. Bolin didn't have the strength to fight against him.

            "Not yet," he said. "You need to lay down."

            With a deep, resigned breath, Bolin closed his eyes. But Lin patted him roughly on the face, and he looked back up at her. He wanted to cry.

            "You're not going back to sleep, either," Lin said gruffly. "So, don't bother trying."

            He looked to Opal again, and this time, she looked back. Her face looked like she'd been crying for days.

            "Opal," Su said quietly, "why don't you and Lin switch. Would that help? I don't think we need to hold him down any more."

            Opal stifled another sob, but she nodded all the same. Then Bolin's bare feet were back on the floor and he could feel all manner of strange sensations through them, all the relief and fear and tension in every body in the room, Korra and Asami disappearing down the hall. Pabu hopped onto his middle and settled down, warm and comfortable. Bolin closed his eyes again, and Lin hit him again.

            "No," she commanded. She spoke the word like he was a misbehaved dog. And then she rose, and as she walked away she said, "Opal, don't let him drift."

            In all the hours of all the days and nights he'd spent staring at Opal's always changing expressions, he'd never seen the one she wore when she appeared over him then. It was a look that went beyond fear and beyond confusion. He imagined it was the same look a sick old woman would give her husband on his death bed. She looked as tired as he felt. It scared him.

            It took every ounce of strength for him to reach toward her, to put his hand on her face, and he thought that she would burst into tears all over again. Driven by the need to comfort her, he wrapped his hand around the back of her head, pulled her weakly down, and kissed her.

            She stayed there long enough for Bolin to consider the sudden strangeness of the whole situation. He'd lost count of the different ways he'd kissed Opal over the years, but upside down was certainly new, and certainly interesting, and perhaps something to try at a time when he was more than half-conscious and slightly farther from death. He'd never imagined kissing her in front of Su, not on the lips, not open-mouthed, and he had never in his wildest dreams entertained that he might ever do it in front of Tenzin and Lin.

            But there he was, all the same.

            And he hadn't thought twice about it.

            At last she pulled away from him, and the look she wore rested somewhere between embarrassed, dumbfounded, and desirous. "You know my mother is watching us," she said quietly, her voice barely above a whisper. She touched his cheek gently. "And you know Aunt Lin and Tenzin are right here, don't you?"

            He didn't care. He wanted to say the words, but he couldn't produce a sound. So, he drew her down a second time, and whatever reservation had existed prior seemed to disappear. He heard Lin groan, exasperated, and at the same time he heard Su utter an 'oh dear' that seemed both impressed and lightly startled, but if Opal heard or cared she gave no indication. They shared the same kiss they had shared hundreds of times in private with the same passion and intensity and meaning and _drive_ as it always had, and by the time she pulled away again, both her hands were on his face and she had gone quite breathless.

            She smiled down at him, but all he could produce in reply was the weakest twitch of a smirk. That was all he had the energy for. He was still too tired.

            "I love you," Opal whispered, and she gave a pathetic sniffle.

            He would have pulled her down again, except he heard Asami utter, "Wow. That was romantic," and he glanced startled toward the door. She was carrying a glass and a pitcher, and wore a fascinated smile. Beside her, Korra stood stone-faced and wide-eyed. Bolin couldn't tell if she looked more like she was going to cry or vomit or faint.

            "All right, lovebirds, that's enough," Lin said dryly. "Let's get you sitting."

            Before Bolin could react, Su and Tenzin had grabbed him beneath his arms and slid him toward Opal. She pulled him up, wrapped her arm around his waist, and held him against her. Pabu fell into his lap.

            Dizzy and exhausted, Bolin laid his head on Opal's shoulder.

            "No sleeping," Lin ordered. "Look at me."

            He looked, but he didn't lift his head.

            "You're going to pass out again if you don't get something in you and keep it there. And you might not be so lucky to wake up next time. Do you understand that?"

            He nodded.

            "Then don't fight us on this." Lin paused, and Bolin pressed his face into Opal's neck. "Asami, let's go."

Bolin didn't fight, and three painfully slow, disgustingly sweet glasses later it seemed that the lot of them were placated, and though he felt a bit of life coming back, he also felt like he’d throw up again. But they stopped forcing things into him. They turned their attention elsewhere, and it seemed that amongst tense talk of twenty-four-hour surveillance and liquid diets and force-feeding and departure to Zaofu, Bolin himself had been forgotten. Everything had gone quiet, and everyone seemed to have calmed.

            He wanted to sleep, but every time he began to drift Opal would shake him gently and whisper words at him he didn't really hear. And even if Opal's constant prodding wasn't enough, every so often Lin would call over at them to check that he was awake, and unless he made direct eye contact with her she would walk over and toe him gently in the leg with her boot until he did. He imagined she meant well, in her own way. It just wasn't like Lin to care so much.

            As he lay, he noticed a pattern of words used among the talking, words that were unflattering but diplomatic: _unstable, troubled, sick, depressed_ , and they all seemed to be used when discussing him. He was certain they knew he could hear: When Lin uttered the word _suicidal_ Tenzin, Su, Korra, and Asami had all shushed her severely, and it hadn't been used again. And there were other words, too, words like _shut down_ and _damaged_ and _all in his head_ and _serious_ and _starvation_ , and for some reason Su kept talking about his feet. It could have been worse, he thought. She could have been talking about his breakdown.

            Bolin couldn't have guessed what time it was when they all approached again. He'd been so content to simply lay with Opal that he hadn't considered it.

            "Sweetheart, I need to talk to you," Su said, and she knelt and touched his face. "I need to talk to you and then you can go to sleep, okay?"

            He looked at her, and she smiled at him. He didn't smile back. He wasn't pleased with her. She was holding his rest hostage for a conversation.

            "Are you feeling any better?" she asked.

            He nestled back into Opal's neck.

            "I'll take that as a yes." Su sighed, and Bolin wasn't going to correct her. "Well, we've all been talking for a while and trying to figure out what to do to help you. I'm sorry that you didn't have a say in the matter, but at this point it can't really be helped." She paused and put her hand on his back. "Are you listening to me?"

            Again, he looked at her. It was all the indication he could give.

            "You're going to go back to Air Temple Island for a few days while I make arrangements to get you to Zaofu. Then, when you're a little stronger, you're going to come home with me and I'm going to take care of you. I think that we can both agree that that's the best thing, don't you think?"

            He didn't move. Pabu had started licking the back of his hand.

            "And here's the part you're going to take issue with," she paused again. "While you're on Air Temple Island, you'll be on bed rest, and we're going to have someone sit with you. Someone will be with you all the time until you come home with me, even when you sleep and even when you go to the bathroom. Do you understand? And someone is going to bring you food and make sure you actually eat."

            He narrowed his eyes dangerously at her, but didn't have the energy to maintain the glare.

            "That's what I thought. Now, I realize that this is... Delicate... But I want you to be as comfortable as possible. I'm happy to let Opal stay overnight with you in the boy's dormitory if it'll help. Tenzin gave the okay, too."

            He felt Opal shift nervously beneath him, and she looked between him and Su confusedly. Her heart had begun to pound. "Mom?"

            "You heard me," Su said sternly to Opal. "You can sleep. You cannot sleep. I don't care. Granted, I doubt he'll have enough energy to do much besides rest for the few days he's there."

            He felt the heat rush into Opal's face, and a similar heat rushed into his own. It was embarrassing. Su had no right to make those kinds of remarks about him, especially not with an audience. He didn’t want her to mock him in front of everyone. She didn't know what he could do. She didn't know how much energy he did or didn’t have.

            He pressed his face back into Opal’s neck. He wanted to disappear.

            "So, Opal will stay with you overnight," Su continued, apparently unfazed by their reactions. "Korra and Asami will take turns days and evenings. If they’ve got to take care of business in the city, then Tenzin or Pema will cover."

            The embarrassment lingered. It shifted. Bolin felt like he was going to cry again. He didn’t want to be watched. He didn’t want to be babysat. He wasn’t a _child_. Didn't they see that this wouldn't help anything? Didn't they see that this would just make him feel worse?

            "I know this is hard," Su said, and she rubbed his back. "I know this isn't what you want, but we have to make sure that you're safe before anything else. We have to get you healthy again.”

            He stifled a sob and covered his face, and when Pabu whimpered at him Opal tightened her hold. He didn't want them to see him cry. It was the same as it had been in the hallway. Everyone was staring at him. Everyone was watching him. He could feel them. He could feel their anxiety. But this time he didn't have the energy to hide. He didn’t have the energy to tremble. All the anger had gone out of him. All the indignation had gone out of him, and all that was left was stark reality.

            He'd brought this on himself.

            He should've hid it better.

            He should've been a better liar.

            He shouldn't have opened up to Korra.

            He shouldn't have waked in the hospital.

            "And Lin explained to us what else happened today, about how the combustion bender threatened you. You're not strong enough to protect yourself right now. You know that as much as I do. Getting you out of the city is the safest thing we can do.”

            He let go a shaky breath.

            “Now, will you work with us?”

            He didn’t answer. He was too caught up imagining how awful the next days would be. He would be all but imprisoned. The privacy he had enjoyed since coming home would be gone. There would be no more training in the morning, no more practicing waterbending, no more meditation, no more walks outside, no more quiet. There was no more choice. It would all be decided for him.

            “Bolin, will you try?”

            He had no choice, so he nodded, and as he moved he felt warm wetness around his eyes and on Opal’s neck, and he suddenly found himself working hard to control his breathing. He desperately didn’t want to cry again. Not in front of everyone.

            “You’ve been awake for a couple hours now. Do you want to try to sleep?”

            For a moment Bolin did nothing. He was conflicted. The sooner he slept the sooner the day would come, and then he would be locked in his room with constant supervision and force-feeding and inescapable embarrassment. But he was so tired. He could barely stay sitting, had begun relying almost completely on Opal to hold him upright, and even now he found himself fighting to stay awake. If he was asleep, he wouldn't hear what they were saying about him. If he was asleep he wouldn't have to face the horrible, horrible truth.

            He'd proved them right.

            He'd proved all of them right.

            Another sob bubbled to the surface, and Bolin worked hard to hold it in. He turned his forehead into Opal's shoulder, and she hugged him still tighter. Pabu chittered. Bolin shuddered. He didn't want to make a choice, and yet he recognized that this was likely the last real choice he would make for himself for a long, long time. Everything hereafter would be scripted. Everything would be planned by whatever people were in charge of his supervision at the time. Every decision from here on out would provide nothing more than the illusion of choice.

            "Bolin?" Su asked again, gentler still. "Do you want to sleep?"

            Yes.

            "Do you want to try to walk to the sofa or should we carry you?"

            Sudden, unyielding shame stopped his thoughts dead in his brain. The illusion had already begun. He could _try_ to walk. How could he have missed the language Su had used? He could barely sit up without help: How could anyone expect him to stand? How could anyone expect him to _walk_? He would stumble and fall and embarrass himself even more, and everyone would touch him again, and they would coddle him again, and they would talk to him in that horrible, pitying voice that everyone seemed to be using.

            He didn't want it.

            He hated himself.

            But the alternative was no better. He shouldn't need to be carried at all. He couldn't remember a time he'd been unable to move under his own power, not even as a kid on the street. Every time he'd been sick or hurt or tired he'd gotten to his bed--or whatever pile of junk served as his bed--on his own steam. Mako had never _had_ to carry him, not once. And who would carry him now? Lin? Su? Some combination of Korra and Asami and Opal? There was no way they would be able to lift him independently, even with his diminished weight. If the girls were to do it, they'd have to hold him by his arms and his feet and lug him across the room like a rolled-up carpet. The only other choice was Tenzin, and the thought of being carried like a baby by _him_ was even more emasculating than the thought of being carried by the girls.

            "I need you to communicate with me, sweetheart," Su said, and she brushed his shoulder with the same gentle touch she had used to mollify him when he broke down in the hallway.

            He had the sudden urge to hit her. He didn't want her to touch him like that, all motherly like she cared at all. He didn't want her pity. He didn't want her comfort. She was going to lock him up.

            He didn't act on the impulse.

            "Even if you don't talk, I need you to let me know what you want," Su continued. But she clipped the final word short, and through her touch Bolin could feel her anxiety mounting. "Are you okay?" she whispered. "You're going all tense again."

            Bolin drew two enormous breaths to ready himself to speak. "I want..." he stopped. He was tired of hearing such a strange, feeble voice coming out of his mouth in barely more than a whisper. He wanted to sound like himself again instead of some timid, depressed little boy. "I want to... To sleep on the floor."

            He felt them staring at him again, but didn't know if it was because of what he said or the fact that he had said it at all, and he wished he'd just stayed silent.

            "We can't let you sleep on the floor," Su said. "It won't be comfortable for you, you won't rest well."

            The illusion of choice.

            What did it matter.

            "Then carry me."

            He'd spoken with more power that time, power generated by searing hatred and embarrassment and spite. He'd spat the words the same way he'd done when he confessed in the hall. But Su didn't say 'oh dear' again and she didn't recoil away from him.

            "Okay," she said, and she lifted Pabu from his middle.

            And then, to his great horror, Tenzin picked him up like a baby and transferred him back to the sofa.

            The moment he'd been set down, Bolin turned his back to the room, curled up, and buried his face as far into the cushions as he could. He was ashamed. He covered what remained of his face with his arms and simply laid there. Someone--Tenzin or Su, most likely--covered him, and a few moments later Pabu jumped up and sat on his thigh. But Bolin didn't want the company. When Pabu nosed him in the arm, he pushed him gently away, and when Pabu tried a second time, Bolin pushed him away again. With a pathetic whine, the fire ferret curled up behind Bolin's knees and lay silent.

            Again, he could hear people talking, but now his feet were off the ground he couldn't feel them anymore. It was harder to understand what they were saying. All Bolin knew was that they no longer sounded afraid or angry or nervous. The voices sounded sad now, and that made him sad, too.

            He pulled the blanket over his head and cried as silently as he could, and by the time Opal had come to keep him company he was spent. Part of him wanted her to go away, but part of him wanted her to stay. Too exhausted to make the decision, he laid there in quiet and pretended to be asleep.

 

*****

 

            A melancholic pall seemed to have fallen over Air Temple Island, seemed to follow Bolin wherever he went, and the very moment he'd been put back in his room there came a marked change in everyone's behavior: Meelo and Rohan stopped running and playing in the halls, Jinora spent more time in her own room losing herself in books, Ikki wandered more often to the far reaches of the island, and even Tenzin and Pema seemed more reserved than usual. Asami stayed away unless it was her turn to watch, and Opal seemed generally hesitant to even enter Bolin's room.

            Korra had watched him sleep the first eight hours he was back on the island, waking him at intervals, and it had been an entirely uninteresting time. An acolyte brought a glass of some thick, light green liquid, and though it had taken a long time and some mild threatening on Korra's part, Bolin drank it. Three hours later came a red liquid of the same consistency, and Bolin had seemed even more agitated about it than the green one. The whole while Korra couldn't be sure if he was upset because people kept waking him up or because people were monitoring his every move.

            She imagined that she'd be upset too, if she was in his position.

            Asami arrived that afternoon with a Pai Sho board and two large books under her arm, and Korra briefed her on the day's news, or what little there was. Then Asami had kissed her lovingly on the cheek and closed the door. Korra lingered long enough to hear Asami greet Bolin cheerfully, and then to hear Asami's voice deflate when Bolin didn't respond.

            He hadn't talked to Korra, either.

            He hadn't talked to anyone.

            The second day brought little improvement. After her morning meditation, Korra entered his room to find him and Opal sitting on the bed with an uncomfortable distance between them, each with their knees up, their arms resting on their knees, and their chins resting on their arms. It was so silent when Korra entered that even Pabu didn't make a sound from his place on the pillow, and Opal didn't say goodbye when she left.

            The same as she had the day before, Korra sat on the floor against the wall, and prepared herself for another eight to ten hours of complete silence.

            "You can sit on the bed."

            Korra thought for a moment that she had imagined the words, but when she looked up, startled, Bolin was clearly looking at her, had clearly raised his head. He still looked angry and sad and generally ill-tempered, but he'd spoken to her all the same, and Korra wasn't about to argue.

            She took a seat at the foot of the bed with her back against the wall, hugged her knees to her chest, and they sat in silence. Bolin didn't even protest when the acolytes brought him his food. If anything, he seemed even more pitiful than the day before. He looked defeated.

            Asami didn't bring the Pai Sho board that afternoon, and on the third morning, Bolin and Opal looked even more uncomfortable than the second. The space between them seemed to have grown. The mood was so tense that Pabu wasn't even on the bed: he was huddled underneath. Bolin didn't so much as look up when Opal left, and she didn't say goodbye.

            Korra found her position at the foot of the bed and didn't bother saying hello. She just put her head down and began the long wait for Asami to show up.

            Around noon that day, things suddenly changed. An acolyte dropped off the day's third glass of whatever it was they were feeding him, but Bolin didn't move. He didn't even flinch, and for a few seconds Korra worried that he'd gone unconscious again. But then she reached out to touch him, and he jerked away.

            "I'm awake," he said coldly.

            "You need to eat," Korra said. "The acolyte just--"

            "I don't want it."

            Korra shut up. The way he snapped had startled her. "You don't really have a choice," she said gently once she had recovered.

            Bolin assumed a posture that Korra hadn't seen in him before, a tense posture that seemed full of energy, like he was ready to burst. And he laughed a bitter, hateful laugh that filled Korra with a sense of extreme foreboding. And then he raised his head and stared at the wall opposite the bed, and Korra knew that the eruption was imminent.

            "Isn't that the problem?" he said. "Isn't that the whole problem with all of this? I don't have a choice! I can't decide anything I do anymore! You want me to drink this crap? Fine!" He stood, snatched the glass from the table, and downed it in one. Korra was surprised by how steady he seemed on his feet. He seemed to have regained a little strength, at least. "There. Are you happy now?" he slammed the glass back down so hard that Korra was surprised it didn't shatter. Then he began to pace in front of the bed. "You people have taken _everything_ away from me! I can't even go to the bathroom by myself! And why? Because you all think I'm going to die or kill myself or hurt myself or..." He stalled and gave a cry of frustration, pressed his hands to his forehead.

            "To be fair, you did collapse because you--"

            "I know! You think I don't know that? I was _there_! I know exactly what happened! Well, except for the parts I was unconscious for, I don't know what happened then, but I know the rest! I mean, I get it. I really do. I understand why everyone is worried but that's why I kept all this stuff away from you guys! I knew you'd overreact! I knew everyone would freak out!"

            "You didn't eat for four days," Korra said, deadpan.

            "I _tried_!"

            "You ate a steam bun. Oh boy."

            "I still tried! And it's like that means nothing to any of you! And now everyone is tiptoeing around me like I'm going to explode in their faces and nobody will talk to me and everyone is acting all afraid of me. Or afraid _for_ me, I don't know which. Everyone is avoiding me! I hate it! I can't make any decisions for myself anymore! Nobody trusts what I say about myself! Nobody trusts what I say about anything! Opal won't even _touch_ me! She's the only reason that I'm even _trying_ right now and she won't even _hug_ me, she won't even hold my hand, never mind trying anything else! It's like she's afraid she's going to _break_ me or something! I mean, I'm glad she gets to spend the nights in here but what good is it if we don't get to _spend the nights_ together? I'm...I'm _frustrated_ and angry and I really just need to--"

            He stopped very suddenly, stopped almost mid-step and looked at the ground, and Korra's heart jumped to her throat. He turned, and for a moment she thought he might aim his tirade at her directly, but instead of continuing to rant, he cast a look on her that harkened back to his first few days out of the hospital, the days of total, brain-dead confusion.

            "Why am I even saying this to you?" He asked, and his voice had gone to disbelief. He didn't seem embarrassed, but he did seem surprised at himself, like he'd not meant to say what he had said out loud. "Every time I tell you anything it gets me in trouble. Why am I talking to you about this?"

            Korra wasn't sure what to say. She didn't know why he was talking about it either. He'd never discussed his relationship with Opal with her before, and while Korra had certainly made some safe assumptions about their status, he'd never confirmed them so directly. The whole thing had her feeling mildly uncomfortable, especially when she remembered the kiss he'd given her the night of the collapse. It had been the same kiss he'd shared with Opal when he was laying half dead on the floor. She hadn't realized that truth until she'd seen it from the outside. But now she knew what that kiss really meant, and whenever she thought about it the flutter came back stronger than ever.

            She shifted her position on the bed, nervous. The anxious bubble was inflating in her stomach again, spreading its strange and juvenile warmth through her middle.

            "I don't know," she said at last with a tiny stammer. "I don't know why you're talking to me about this."

            He sat heavily back down on the edge of the bed and dropped his forehead into his hands. It seemed that the anger had faded and left exhaustion in its place. "I mean... You know what I'm talking about. You know what it's like. Opal and I haven't seen each other for what... A _month_? We haven't been alone together for weeks and now we've got time and privacy and we even have the luxury of a _door_ and a _bed_ and she won't even consider it!" The cry of frustration came weaker this time, and he shook his head helplessly.

            Korra felt even more unsure what to say now. He had put her on the spot. He was trying to empathize. It was a step in the right direction, sure, but she had no idea how to make a connection. She floundered, she stammered a bit, and she began to fidget. She felt a little embarrassed. "Bolin...I might not be the best person to talk to about..." She stopped. For some reason the words caught in her throat.

            Bolin pulled himself the rest of the way onto the bed and turned to face Korra again. He didn't look angry anymore. Now, he looked somewhere between curious and concerned. "You understand what it's like...Don't you?"

            "No," Korra replied, and she was surprised by how honestly the word had come out. "I don't know what you mean at all."

            Bolin went very pale, and for a moment Korra worried he might faint again. "You mean..." he stammered. "You mean you and Mako never...?"

            "No."

            "And you and Asami haven't..."

            "No."

            "Oh..." Bolin looked down at the blanket bashfully, and now he was fidgeting, too. The color had come back into his face. A little too much color had come back into his face. He'd gone pink. "Then I guess this just got a little awkward."

            He backed up to the wall, drew his knees to his chest again, and dropped his head down. It was the same defeated, depressed position he'd sat in for the last three days.

            "I can talk to her, if you want," Korra said.

            "And what exactly are you going to say?" The attitude had come back. His voice had taken on an edge of anger and sarcasm. "Last time you told someone what I said I ended up on house arrest."

            "You're not on house arrest. And I don't know what I would say. I don't know how to bring up the idea at all. But I can try, if you want."

            Bolin just shook his head. Korra could see him deflating. She felt guilty.

            "You're supposed to be leaving for Zaofu tomorrow," Korra reasoned, and she leaned her head against the wall. She stared at the ceiling, trying to think. "And you know that Opal is going to stay here so she can go with Asami and me. We had that planned a long time ago. So tonight is the last time you're going to see her for at least a few days, maybe a week."

            "I know, I know. Don't remind me."

            "I'll talk to her this evening. I'll see what I can do to get her to ease up a little."

            Bolin looked nervous, now.

            "I'll be delicate," Korra said, reassuringly. "I'm not just going to walk up to her and say, 'Hey, Opal, you know Bolin wants--'"

            "I get it," Bolin interrupted. "I get it."

            "You used to trust me," Korra said sadly. "Just, trust me again a little bit, okay?"

            Bolin looked at her, his face gone blank. "I just want things to be normal again," he sighed. Then he laid his head back on his arms.

            The silence lasted until Korra left.

            Korra made her way directly to Opal’s room in the girl’s dormitory, the room she'd been assigned but almost never occupied. She looked tired but still sat on the bed staring at a book without turning the pages. It was clear she wasn't reading it. When Korra entered, she looked up sleepily.

            "Hey," she said.

            "Hey," Korra replied. "I just thought I'd check in with you."

            It wasn't a _total_ lie.

            "Oh," Opal said. "Well, here I am. Jinora gave me this book to read but I think I'm just too tired."

            The opportunity was too good to pass up. "Too tired to read, huh? Not been getting much sleep?" Korra had meant the words to come out a playful tease, a way to open the door into the difficult conversation, but the look Opal gave her shut the thought down at once.

            "No," Opal said tersely. "I haven't."

            "Oh."

            Awkward silence.

            "So," Korra pressed on, "we're leaving tomorrow. Are you ready to go?"

            Opal shrugged and looked back down at the book. "As ready as I'm going to be, considering we don't really know what we're getting into."

            Awkward silence.

            "I don't want to be rude, but did you _need_ something?" Opal said after a few seconds. She didn't sound upset, but Korra knew that she was catching on to the fact that this wasn't just a friendly visit. "Because you're acting kind of weird."

            "Oh, well, I uh," Korra stammered, then she left off lamely.

            " _Well you uh_ what?"

            "I was just wondering how things are," Korra said at last, "between you... And Bolin... Lately."

            Korra couldn't tell if Opal looked indignant or confused. Her face screwed up for just a moment before she relaxed again, and then Opal looked down at the book with a somewhat melancholy expression.

            "Not great," she said quietly. "But I guess that's to be expected."

            "I guess," Korra agreed. "He paid you a really nice compliment this morning."

            "Oh? He talked to you?"

            Korra nodded, but was nervous. She wondered if he had talked to Opal. He hadn't talked to Asami, hadn't talked to the acolytes, and hadn't talked to either Tenzin or Pema since returning to the island. It wasn't unreasonable to think he'd treat Opal the same way.

            "Yeah," Korra said.

            Opal watched her expectantly for a moment, and then said, "Well? Are you going to tell me what he said?"

            Korra floundered. She didn't exactly want to use Bolin's words--they hadn't been particularly uplifting--but she also didn't want to get caught in an outright lie. "Well," she said slowly, "he said that you're the reason he's hanging on."

            "What's that supposed to mean?"

            Korra sighed. "He loves you," she said, and the flutter erupted in her stomach again. "And he wants things to be as normal as they can between the two of you. That's what he said."

            Again, the confused, indignant look.

            "Look," Korra's voice went very serious, "everything in his life is really messed up right now. Everybody knows that. And you're the only person who can provide him some stability. You're the only thing in his life that's remained the same through this whole mess. You're his foundation, and if you're shaky then he's not going to be able to rebuild."

            Opal didn't say anything. She just stared at Korra and wore much the same expression that Bolin took on when he'd been offended or confused. It was endearing, in a way, how much the two had rubbed off on each other. Again, Korra felt the tiniest bit of jealousy.

            "Just...Just think about it, okay?" Korra said. And then she left without affording Opal the chance to respond.

            Korra spent the rest of the evening in her room, preparing to depart for the Boiling Rock investigation. Tenzin had mentioned that such a trip might take four or five days, so she packed a bag with clothes and provisions to account for six. It never hurt to be over prepared.

            Asami came in well after dinner time. She looked exhausted, and she flopped down on Korra's bed without uttering a word and draped her arm over her eyes.

            "That bad?" Korra asked.

            "He's just so _quiet_ ," Asami replied. "It's weird. It's creepy! I don't like it at all. And sitting there for such a long time, it's tiring."

            "I know," Korra agreed. "But I think him going to Zaofu will do a lot of good for everyone. It'll give him time to recover and it'll let all of us stop tiptoeing around the fact that Mako might be out there somewhere."

            "I hope we find him."

            "I do, too."

            They lay in the quiet for a while.

            "So, Bolin and Opal are pretty serious, then," Asami said quietly, as though the thought had just struck her.

            "Yeah," Korra said, downcast. "They're pretty serious."

            "Well, good for them," Asami said.

            "Yeah. Good for them."

            They fell into quiet again.

            As she lay on the bed with Asami at her feet, Korra couldn't help but compare their relationship to Bolin and Opal's, and she couldn't help but see the shortcomings. Of course, they had been together far longer than she and Asami had, but even when they first met they seemed to have had a comfort with each other that Korra worried she would never feel with Asami. It wasn't to say that Asami made her uncomfortable, but it seemed to be a different kind of comfort. Where Korra and Asami might spill their darkest secrets to one another, Bolin and Opal would live them together.

            Or they might have before the collapse.

            All at once Korra sat upright, an idea in her head that hadn't been there before, and she watched Asami laying there and wondered why they shouldn't be able to share the same sort of connection. She wondered if perhaps it was time to move forward.

            "Are you okay?" Asami asked. It seemed she had noticed Korra's staring.

            "Yeah," Korra replied. She felt herself blushing again, and she looked down. She fidgeted. "I was just thinking... Maybe we..." She paused and drew a deep breath. She was stammering. She sounded stupid. Words weren't going to do the trick.

            Asami sat up, her forehead creased with concern. "What's wrong?"

            All Korra could do for a long time was look at Asami and wonder why she was so nervous about engaging romantically with her. Yes, she'd had relatively little experience with it, especially with initiating, but it should have been easy. It should have been just as easy as it had once been to kiss Mako.

            But it wasn't.

            It took every ounce of Korra's willpower to force herself forward, and even as her lips connected with Asami's it felt to her as clumsy and forced and a little bit awkward. The kiss lasted only long enough for Korra to realize that she hadn't done it right.

            She'd never kissed a girl before.

            She was used to kissing boys, and she was used to the boys taking the lead.

            This was going to be more complicated than she thought.

            "Well," Asami said, a little breathless, "that was a surprise."

            Korra felt her face going a darker shade of red. "Sorry."

            Asami laughed. "Don't apologize! I just wasn't expecting that. I thought something really serious was wrong."

            "Oh."

            "Let's lay down," Asami said softly. "We've got a really long day ahead of us, and an early morning besides."

            Korra nodded, and she fell back onto her pillow. Asami fell down beside her, and the two shared a look that Korra could only call _intimate_. Asami smiled in a way that Korra hadn't seen before. And then Asami kissed her, and it felt right.

            When Korra fell asleep, she felt a little more whole than she had felt before.

            Asami woke her at sunrise the next morning with a gentle shake and a kiss on the forehead, and Korra knew that the step had been taken. She sat up with a stretch, and Asami smiled.

            "We've got a little under an hour before Su said she wanted to leave for Zaofu," Asami explained. "I'm going to go get us some breakfast, why don't you go get Opal and Bolin and they can come join us. It'll be the last time we see him for a while. It might be nice."

            Asami left before Korra could object.

            Korra got around very slowly. On days prior she hadn't thought twice about the shift change, but today she did. Today, she was a little nervous. Considering the conversation she'd had with Bolin yesterday, she wasn't exactly sure what she would see. The same as every other day, she greeted the sentries at their posts and knocked gently on the door. When nobody answered, she knocked again a hair louder. And nobody answered again.

            She wasn't sure what she expected when she went in the room, but she found herself surprised by the _normalcy_ of it all. There was no hiding that her talk with Opal had worked to great effect. Between the clothes on the floor and their own disheveled appearances, that fact was clear. But there was nothing indecent about what she'd walked in on, not like she had feared there'd be. They were sleeping close beneath the blankets, him behind her, his arm around her middle. It was, apart from the apparent nakedness, the exact position that Bolin had assumed with Korra the night he'd kissed her.

            The flutter erupted again. Her stomach felt very warm inside.

            If Korra hadn't been sure how to wake Bolin when he was clothed, she certainly didn't know how to do it now.

            She cleared her throat.

            They didn't move.

            She cleared her throat again, louder.

            They didn't move again. But this time, Pabu poked his head out from beneath the bed and ran to her happily, skittered up her leg and sat on her shoulder.

            "Good morning, Pabu," she said, and she scratched the fire ferret under the chin. "You want to go wake them up for me?"

            Pabu licked her finger and jumped down, and then he jumped up on the bed and began nibbling at Bolin's hand. She always found it fascinating how Pabu managed to understand exactly what they wanted him to do.

            "Go away, Pabu," Bolin said sleepily, and he brushed Pabu away. But Pabu chittered at him and bit him a little harder, and Bolin opened his eyes, pushed himself up to rest on his elbow, and glared at him. "Pabu, not right now! I'm trying to--"

            He interrupted himself with a high pitched yelp the minute he saw Korra standing in the doorway, and his reaction woke Opal, who noticed immediately. She didn't yelp, though. She just stared at Korra with a look of utter panic.

            Korra felt herself turning red. "I uh, I was told to come wake you up for breakfast."

            By this point, Bolin had yanked the sheets to his neck, and Opal's face had gone to rest. "Oh," said Opal gently. Now she was over her initial fright, she seemed completely normal, as though this scenario was commonplace. "What time is it?"

            "A little past seven, I think," Korra replied. "Su wants to leave for Zaofu in an hour or so, so Asami was going to get us all some breakfast to share." She paused awkwardly and looked directly at Bolin. "If you'll eat it, anyway."

            Bolin still looked panicked, but it was a different panic than what he'd looked a few nights prior. This was an _I'm in trouble_ panic more than a blind, uncontrollable fear. He looked like a little kid who got caught with his hand in the cookie jar. In a way, Korra thought it was cute.

            "Look," Korra said flatly, "I get it. You're in bed together. I don't care. Are you going to come for breakfast or not?"

            Opal and Bolin exchanged a look, and Opal shrugged. Then Bolin shrugged. They both looked back to Korra.

            "Sure," Opal said. "But we're going to need a few minutes. Can we meet you?"

            Korra nodded, and as she closed the door behind her she heard Opal say, "What are you so uptight about anyway?"

            She smiled as she walked to the kitchens.

            Korra hadn't seen Bolin in such a pleasant mood since before the explosion in Ba Sing Se. He sat at the table and patted Pabu absently on the head, watched them eat, participated at least partly in some of the conversations, and didn't complain when Pema scolded him for being out of bed. To be fair, Pema's heart wasn't in it, so the scolding hadn’t been too serious.

            More, there was a distinct difference in the way he and Opal interacted, and again Korra couldn't help but compare herself and Asami to them. They were sitting closer, but not too close as to be awkward for the others at the table, and when they bumped each other they didn't apologize. They didn't mention it at all, in fact, which served as more proof of their unconditional comfort with one another.

            Opal offered to share her breakfast with Bolin when it came, but he refused and Opal didn't seem bothered. And when Opal asked to try some of Bolin's, he relinquished his glass without hesitation. He didn't even laugh at her when she spat it back out. He simply said, "If you drink it fast enough, you don't taste it," and then downed the whole glass in less than ten seconds while Opal stared disgustedly at him. When he'd finished, he looked back at her and said quite deadpan, "Well, it saves time anyway."

            The hour passed quickly, and Korra, Asami, and Opal escorted Bolin to the platform from which Su's airship would depart. Pabu jumped from his shoulder and scampered into the airship, and Su greeted them all pleasantly and hugged them all in turn. She spent a particularly long time looking Bolin up and down before pronouncing that he looked better than he had a few days ago, and though Bolin hadn't said anything in reply, Korra noted that his face had turned pink.

            And then it was time to say good-bye. Tenzin, Pema, and the airbender children arrived on the platform and wished them well. To Korra's surprise, Tenzin extended his hand to Bolin in a gesture of fraternal respect, and Bolin had taken it a bit bashfully. Then Pema hugged him, and as soon as she had let go Asami hurled herself forward so forcefully that Bolin stumbled, and she stayed latched on to his front for a solid minute. She threatened him with all manner of punishments if he didn't take care of himself, and then she let him go with an enormous kiss on the cheek, and he went even more pink than he'd been before.

            For an awkward moment, Korra looked at him, and he looked at Korra, and it seemed that neither of them really knew what to do. But then he timidly extended his arms and beckoned her forward, and Korra walked into him. The embrace caused the same strong shot of adrenaline to course from her head to her toes, and when he whispered a hushed, "Thank you," in her ear, goosebumps sprang up on her arms. When she pulled away, he wore the same sheepish grin he'd worn the night he'd kissed her, and for the first time, the thought of kissing him back popped unbidden into her brain.

            Then it was Opal's turn, and for a few moments they just stood looking at each other. It was a different look than what Bolin and Korra had shared. It was a look that said in every way that they knew what to do, but they weren’t sure if it was acceptable in their present company.

            "You don't need my permission to kiss each other," Su said dryly. "You certainly didn't seem to need it the other night."

            The tension broken, Opal rushed forward and threw her arms around his neck. As if by instinct, his went around her waist, and she buried her head in his chest and he turned his face down. Korra thought she could see him whispering, but there was no way to know what he was saying. When they pulled apart, Opal had gone scarlet again. And then he kissed her.

            It was like something straight from a mover, the way he'd done it, and not for the first time Korra found herself surprised by just how capable of romance Bolin was. He'd come in low and swept Opal in, and his hand found its way automatically to her neck, his thumb on her cheek, and they lingered together comfortably.

            It felt to Korra that they kissed for an eternity, an eternity that she spent watching and remembering how she had experienced that same kiss, and how it had been so strange and so startling and so _warm_ , and how he'd opened his mouth against hers the same way that he had done to Opal's a thousand times before. She remembered the kiss Asami had given her the night prior, and though it had certainly been pleasant it hadn't given her the same electric feeling that Bolin's had, and Korra wondered if perhaps it was the touch of experience that had set his apart.

            Then Bolin and Opal broke apart, and they stared at each other as if it was the last time they'd see each other for a lifetime. At some point, Asami had grabbed Korra's hand and held it tight, and when Korra looked at her, her eyes had taken on a misty look like she was ready to cry.

            She could barely hear Bolin say, "I love you."

            Opal burst into tears and threw herself at him again, and she held him around his middle and cried into his chest while he shushed her and stroked her head and kissed her hair. When it seemed she had calmed, Bolin tucked his finger under her chin and drew her into another kiss, a shorter kiss, and when he pulled away he grinned lopsidedly.

            "I'll see you in a few days," he said, and he brushed the tears from her face. "Okay?"

            Opal nodded and rubbed at her face. "I love you."

            He grinned and kissed her forehead. "I love you, too."

            And then Bolin jammed his hands into his pockets and turned to Su with a shrug, and she motioned him toward her. She wore a look of maternal satisfaction. With one last wave, Su planted her hand in the middle of Bolin's back and walked him silently up the ramp into the airship.

            He didn't look back to see Korra trying not to cry.


	22. Arrival

            Mako had never been one for remembering his dreams. Not since his parents died. Too much of his time after that horrific event had been spent fending for himself, caring for Bolin, and making sure that the two of them could make it through the night. He didn't have the luxury of dwelling too much on what he imagined on the rare occasions he slept restfully enough to dream. Most nights in those times he'd stayed awake into the small hours, watching and waiting for someone or something to come creeping out of the shadows in the alleys of Republic City to attack them. And the rare nights he wasn't afraid, he'd stayed awake into the small hours watching Bolin fitfully sleeping on whatever dumpster pile they called home at the time, wondering to himself how much longer he'd be able to carry the burden of their safety.

            But the three nights prior to his deployment, Mako slept hard and dreamed deeply of memories from those days.

            He'd worked so hard, back then. He'd worked so hard to make sure that Bolin stayed sheltered from the harsh realities of life on the streets. He'd sacrificed himself for the benefit of his little brother and for a while he'd felt as though they would make it. He had pulled them through all manner of dangerous situations and illnesses and injuries, even when he didn't want to move on himself. He did it all to keep Bolin safe.

            In Mako's dreams, they were together. Bolin was still ten years old and just as mindless and naive as he ever was. And he got into trouble. He ate too much of the food. He stuck his nose in places it didn't belong. He caused more trouble than he was worth. But in his dreams, Mako didn't mind, because in the end they were both healthy. In the end, they were both alive.

            When Mako woke each of those three mornings, he thought on the dreams he'd had, and for the first time in his life he turned his mind to those days with purpose. That time in his life had been hard, yes, but it had also been rewarding: He had raised a child, even as a child himself. And he hadn't just raised a _child_ : He'd raised a truly decent human being who strived to cling to every scrap of happiness he could find and learned to balance pragmatism with humor. Almost, anyway. He had raised a human being who housed just a little too much empathy in his enormous heart, even if it meant that Mako himself had grown just a little too cold.

            He wondered what his parents would think of how they turned out in the end.

            He wondered what they would think if they knew Bolin was gone.

            It was hard for Mako to pretend for those three days, but he managed. Through hours of morning training and afternoons of meetings about logistics and rendezvous points and all manner of other bureaucracy, he kept a straight face and maintained the strongest front of allegiance he could muster. He endured his fitting for civilian clothes straight-faced, but the whole while he was thinking about Bolin. He thought about how hard he'd worked to keep them both alive, only to have it all be for nothing in the end. He thought about how much he hated these people and how badly he wanted to bring them down.

            The night before his departure he laid with Toru and discussed the whole operation, partly to let her know what he was going to do and partly to make sure he'd gotten everything straight in his own head. He explained how the voyage would take two days each way, how they would travel on a cargo ship with other quads under the pretense of exporting Fire Nation goods to Republic City. They’d stay for some period of time, and then come home.

            Everything about their arrival had been planned down to the hour: An attack would coincide with the docking of their ship to draw police presence away from the pier. Mako and his men would disembark, disappear into the alleyways, and make their way to a prearranged rendezvous in the Dragon Flats borough, where they would be housed in an inn fronted by the Society. He'd have the remainder of that day to settle and finalize his plans, but was scheduled to meet with a Triad representative at some seedy sounding bar at ten o'clock.

            Mako wasn't sure exactly how that meeting would go yet. But providing he came out the other side alive, he'd have ample time to execute his own personal plans before hopping the same cargo vessel back to Fire Fountain City.

            Toru had cried when Mako explained the deal he'd made with Guan, and she'd stayed with him the rest of that night.

            The morning of his departure, Mako rose early, packed what few things he had, and began the long walk to the northern beach with his duffel slung over his shoulder. He met Yaozhu along the way, and for the rest of the walk Yaozhu wouldn't shut up about how excited he was to finally get to see the big city. His naivety was endearing. It reminded Mako of Bolin.

            The cargo vessel itself was enormous and crawling with people. Mako and Yaozhu met with Jing and Fa quickly, and they boarded the ship without much idea of where they would go or what they would do when they got there.

            An officer brandishing a palm-sized notebook met them at the top of the boarding ramp.

            "Your number?" asked the officer.

            "Four zero five," Mako replied. He watched the officer flip through his book and make a few check marks. "We clear to go?"

            "Your quad will be quartered in number twelve below decks. You'll go drop off your bags, and I'll send a crewman to show you the boat."

            Mako looked to the other three and shrugged, and they shrugged in reply. He turned back to the officer and said, "Okay."

            The officer saluted stiffly and stepped aside. As a matter of respect, Mako threw him a lazy salute in reply as he walked past.

            "I've never seen a boat this big!" Yaozhu cried as they walked. "How many people do you think can fit on this boat? How much cargo do you think it can carry?"

            "I don't know," Mako replied, deadpan.

            "I wonder if we'll meet anybody we know. I've never been to the city before. I've never been to _any_ city before. I'm really excited!"

            "I can tell."

            Yaozhu continued blabbering until Mako opened the door to their quarters, a tiny square room with two sets of bunk beds that seemed just large enough for him to lay flat on his back. The four of them could barely stand inside without stepping on one another.

            "I call the top!" Yaozhu cried, and he scrambled up to one of the beds, and Fa crawled into the bed immediately below.

            For a second, Mako looked at Jing. He raised his eyebrow and considered the bunks for a moment. No way he was going to sleep on such a rickety bed below such a big guy. If it was to break he'd be crushed. "No offense, buddy, but I'm on top," he said after a moment, and threw his duffel up.

            "Yes, sir," Jing replied. He didn't sound offended.

            They had barely gotten settled when the promised crewman arrived to give them their tour. He showed them the common bathroom, which made Mako feel a little nauseous, the galley, which made him feel a little more nauseous, and several removable panels and secret cubbies inside which they were to hide in the event they were boarded by the United Forces navy. Mako realized that this was less a cargo ship as a smuggling ship.

            Mako counted six separate quads boarding the vessel, but he imagined there would be more. He didn't pay much attention to the people, though. He was too busy staring at the filth. By the time they were finished, he had decided that their bunk was the cleanest room on the ship, and he'd be perfectly happy to spend the trip laying on his cot, small as it may be.

            "Meals served at seven, one, and seven," the crewman said when he'd dropped them back off at their room. "We cast off in twenty minutes. You're free to roam, but stay out of our way and don't put your noses where they don't belong."

            Another exchange of salutes, and then they were alone.

            "I want to go look around!" Yaozhu cried, and both Fa and Jing seemed interested in joining him. "Can we go, Cap?"

            "I don't care," Mako replied, "just stay out of trouble."

            "Yes, sir!"

            "And if you do get into trouble don't come crying to me. I'm your Captain, not your nanny."

            "Yes, sir!"

            And then Mako was alone.

            He climbed to his bed and settled in, hands folded behind his head, and stared at the ceiling not more than two feet above his face. There would be no sitting up here, but it afforded him some privacy, and Mako appreciated that. He closed his eyes and waited for the ship to start lurching.

            A great steam whistle blew somewhere above, and Mako knew it was time. He imagined Yaozhu at the railing, waving at whoever was watching them depart, and he shook his head at the thought. Then the room seemed to shake around him, and shortly after began rocking gently back and forth. They were at sea.

            The first day passed uneventfully. Jing dealt with a bout of seasickness, and Mako had to listen to him vomiting into a bucket for several nauseating hours that led to three skipped meals. Yaozhu seemed to have occupied himself above decks and Mako had seen almost none of him since they'd boarded. Fa slept and snored softly.

            Except for Jing's retching, it was quiet, and Mako didn't mind. He lay on his bunk listening to the waves pounding on the hull, the whirring of the propellers, and the voices of the crewmen yelling commands at each other. It was strangely relaxing, he thought.

            He didn't know what time it was when Yaozhu came bursting into the room, an excited bounce to his step. Mako looked down at him skeptically, but Yaozhu just beamed an enormous smile back at him and squealed, "You've got to come look!"

            "At what?" Mako replied.

            "Just come look!"

            With an enormous sigh and a roll of his eyes, Mako dropped from his bunk and followed Yaozhu outside. He practically sprinted through the halls, much to the dismay of the crewmen he nearly bowled over, and Mako found himself apologizing on his behalf more than he would have liked. But at the same time, he couldn't imagine scolding the kid for his excitement.

            It was dark when they emerged on the deck, and Mako stood dumbfounded for a moment, looking up. He'd never been so far from city lights before. He'd never known there were so many stars in the sky.

            "Come on!"

            Yaozhu grabbed his wrist, and Mako startled back to reality.

            "Oh, I hope it's still there!"

            They weaved between containers at breakneck pace toward the front of the boat, and eventually came to the railing where Yaozhu pointed exuberantly at the water and cried, "Just watch!"

            Mako watched, unsure of what he was looking for.

            And then Yaozhu began to jump wildly and point. "Look! Look! There!"

            Mako squinted at the water, and a vague orange shape appeared below the surface. He wasn't sure how he could have missed it: The thing was gigantic. It rose and fell beneath the swells, coming in and out of sight as it swam before the bow, but no matter how long Mako stared at it he couldn't figure out exactly what it was. He saw a fin. He saw a black stripe. Otherwise, it was an orange streak in a sea of blue.

            "It's a tiger shark!" Yaozhu cried. "It's huge!"

            "A... Tiger shark..." Mako stammered. He'd seen one at the Republic City Zoo once before his parents died, but he couldn't remember much except that it had been so tiny that he hadn't really paid attention. He did remember Bolin being impressed in the way that only a four-year-old could be, and the only reason he recalled the matter was because he'd been profoundly annoyed.

            Guilt erupted in his breast.

            "Yeah! We've got them around my home island but they never get this big! Isn't it cool?"

            "Sure."

            "You want to sit and watch with me?"

            Mako shrugged. "Whatever, kid."

            They sat against the railing, their legs hanging over the side of the boat and watched the water pass by for what felt to Mako like hours. He could never decide if he was more impressed looking up at the stars or down at the water, but he knew he found the open air preferable to their stagnant bunk room, and the spray of the water on his face felt oddly refreshing.

            The tiger shark eventually disappeared, and afterward it seemed that every time Mako looked away from the water Yaozhu was calling out about some other strange animal. Once he'd pointed to a black blob in the distance and announced it as a _snail turtle_ , but Mako had never heard of such a thing before and couldn't see enough detail to know for sure exactly what it was.

            "We call them snurtles at home!" Yaozhu said happily.

            Again, Mako couldn't bring himself to deny Yaozhu's glee.

            The moon was riding high by the time Mako stood, stretched, and yawned. "We better turn in," he said, and then he looked disheartened at the maze of containers between them and the stairs leading back to their quarters. "Get us back to the bunk."

            "Yes, sir, Captain, sir!" Yaozhu saluted and practically skipped the whole way back to the room.

            Mako didn't sleep well. Between Jing's unpredictable retching, Fa's snoring, and the waves slapping against the hull, it was just too noisy. And after being out in the open, the longer he laid on his bunk the more claustrophobic he felt. Still, he stayed there with his eyes closed and tried to focus on what was to come. He would fulfill his mission in the city. Then he would go see Beifong. Maybe she would take him to see where Bolin had been buried.

            Whenever he thought about that, he wanted to cry again.

            Mako stayed up so late that he slept through breakfast and lunch the next day, and didn't wake until a crewman came to their door to announce that all captains were to meet in the galley for a briefing on docking procedure and itinerary. He groaned groggily and dropped to the ground, and Yaozhu shouted, "See you later, Cap!" after him as he left.

            His earlier assumption had been correct: There were eleven other men in the galley when he found a seat at a table in the back, which meant there were twelve quads aboard the ship, plus crewmen. There was nothing remarkable about any of them, nothing to set them apart as captains in their civilian attire, but Mako noted the same air of discipline and command that he'd felt at his dinner meeting with Guan's council.

            "We'll dock at Republic City's south harbor at eight o’clock tomorrow morning," said a man who had appeared at the front of the room. Mako didn't know when he'd come in. He hadn't been paying attention. "Make certain that your quads are ready to depart on the signal. Each of you should have received orders prior to boarding, and it is your responsibility to fulfill your duties in the three days we'll be docked."

            Three days, Mako thought. If he was supposed to meet the Triad leaders on the first, that would leave him ample time to take care of his own business. For the first time in a long time, he felt relieved. But the relief didn't last.

            "Attacks have been planned in strategic locations around the city and will be staggered for maximum effect. Our docking will be covered by attacks downtown."

            Mako's stomach tightened with anxiety.

            “The day after tomorrow there will be three more attacks. One of these will take place at one o'clock at the Southern Water Tribe Cultural Center and a second will target several locations in the Little Ba Sing Se borough. The third attack will hit police headquarters between five and six o'clock, depending on police presence."

            Mako felt nauseous again, but for entirely different reasons than he'd felt before. Five thirty was shift change at the precinct. There would be twice as many officers in the building as usual, and more besides if they were responding to other attacks. Beifong would probably have every officer and detective in the city on duty.

            Suddenly his timeline had shortened.

            "As you become available, report to these areas to assist in the liberation of firebenders. Any nonbender witnesses should be destroyed. Earthbenders, waterbenders, and airbenders should be brought back to the ship for processing.”

            This is human trafficking, Mako thought. They were going to kidnap more people to do slave labor around the island. And people—the fire benders who’d been taken captive and truly fallen for the propaganda—were happy to oblige. Mako wondered what had gone wrong in their minds to make them incapable of seeing the evil they were doing.

            "A final attack has been planned at the pro-bending arena at the time of our departure at sundown on the third day. If you're late, you're not coming back."

            Mako didn't hear much else from the briefing. He was too busy trying to think of ways to prevent all this violence from happening, but the conflict in his head was making it difficult to come up with a plan.

            He had to meet with the Triad leaders, and that meeting had to be successful. The safety of Toru and his quad depended on that much. But at the same time, he'd have to make the meeting short. He'd have to find a way to contact Beifong before the twin attacks took place, and he'd have to do it as quietly as he could. If word got back to his superiors that he'd spilled such sensitive information, he'd be killed without hesitation. He would have to return to Fire Fountain City to report his success and make sure that Guan honored their deal.

            It was a tall order, by any measure, and the itinerary the officer had just presented cut a whole day off what little time he thought he'd have.

            The meeting adjourned at dinner time, and Mako met Yaozhu, Jing, and Fa at the same table they had occupied the day prior. But Mako had no appetite. He just poked at his food, stared at his plate, and worried.

            He didn't sleep again that night, but not because of the noise. The more time passed by the more nervous he was to be back in the city, and every time he thought of being home, the anxiety blossomed. He couldn't go back to Air Temple Island. He had to lay low until he spoke to the Chief. Lives depended on his execution of the plans.

            Unable to relax, he dropped quietly from his bunk and made his way above decks. He wound about the containers and eventually arrived at the bow of the ship where he’d watched the tiger shark swimming along the night prior. There were no animals tonight, though. Instead he could see on the horizon the faint golden haze of city lights shining like a distant man-made sunrise. It set a pit in his stomach. Each second brought him closer to the city. Each second brought him closer to the greatest moral and ethical dilemma he had ever faced.

            He would fulfill his mission and meet with the Triad. And then he would go talk to Beifong about the intelligence he’d gathered over the last weeks. Maybe she would be able to provide him with some guidance. Maybe she would be able to help him figure out what to do.

            For a while, Mako sat with his feet overhanging the deck, his arms slung over the lower railing, and watched as the city drew closer. Dread mounted in his stomach. They would sail right past Air Temple Island. They would sail right past the pro-bending arena.

            Eventually the deck began to fill with crew and quads waiting to disembark, and Mako stood to make way. He leaned on the railing, and after a time Yaozhu plopped his arms down beside him, and when Mako looked at him his eyes had gone round and his mouth hung open in awe. The sun had begun to peek over the tops of the ruined skyline. Yaozhu whispered a disbelieving “Whoa,” and Mako grinned at his innocence.

            “Welcome to Republic City,” Mako said.

            "It's..." Yaozhu seemed unable to form words. "It's... Huge!"

            "It's a city," Mako replied coolly. "And it’s not in great shape right now. Did you bring my bag?"

            "Jing has it," Yaozhu said, his eyes still on the lights. He sounded all dreamy, every bit like the kid he was.

            He asked about everything from the gigantic statue of Avatar Aang and Air Temple Island, which Mako explained with some degree of regret, and the arena, which Mako explained with more regret, and the airships he saw, and the patrolling officers in their metal uniforms, and the Satomobiles, which Yaozhu had never seen before.

            Mako didn't mention his connections with any of these places or any of the people in them. That would have to come later, if it came at all.

            "Go get the other two and bring them here," Mako said as they entered the southern docking channel. "We're going to have to act fast, and I don't want to be looking for you guys when it's time to go."

            Yaozhu saluted sloppily and rushed off between the containers, and Mako stood vigil at the bow of the ship. He was close enough to the banks that he could have jumped to them, if he'd wanted to. He could see the features on the faces of the people that rushed by about their early morning business. The city was waking up, he knew. And it would be greeted with something horrible.

            Yaozhu returned with Jing and Fa in tow. The four of them waited together, and if Yaozhu remained awestruck and excited, the other two looked terrified. Mako wondered if they worried they'd get lost.

            "Don't worry," Mako said out of nowhere, "I know these streets better than anyone on this boat. I guarantee it."

            And then there bloomed a distant explosion. And then another. And then a third.

            Mako could see the flashes of fire as they shot into the lightening sky, could see the plumes of smoke that followed them. And like clockwork, the metalbending officers who had been stationed at the docks rushed away, their radios blaring.

            There wasn't enough time to feel guilty about the attacks. There was business to tend to.

            A few quads jumped into the channel and swam to the southern bank, but Mako knew better than that. The attacks had struck north. If they went the long way to Dragon Flats, they'd easily blend in with the crowd amongst the chaos.

            "Follow me, and don't get separated," Mako said in a low voice once the officers had cleared, and then he vaulted the rail and dropped to the ground.

            He wasn't sure how the others managed to follow him, especially Fa and Jing considering their lack of athleticism. But they followed nonetheless as Mako darted between the shadows of docked vessels. Behind him, he could hear the calls of policemen who'd returned to the docks. Chaos seemed to have erupted there as well.

            Wordlessly, Mako ducked into an alley, where he stopped and looked back. He could see cables flying and men falling. It seemed the metalbenders didn't approve of such a large influx of undocumented people from an unchecked ship.

            "Act natural," Mako said to the others. "If people around you look scared, you look scared too. If people around you don't care, then you don't care either. Do you understand me? If you blend in, we won't get caught."

            He didn't wait for a response. Instead he set out once more, eastward toward the slums, and toward Dragon Flats.

 

            By the time they had traversed the southern coast of Republic City's central island, the sun had risen above the buildings, and the chaos of the explosions that had heralded the firebenders' coming had taken full effect. Metalbending officers were everywhere, just as Mako had suspected they might be, and to be safe he led the others south of Cabbage Corp to the bridge connecting the central island to the south.

            As they crossed the bridge, Mako looked over the bay to the Future Industries compound, its few intact buildings all lit up, and another pang of regret hit him in his middle. If he had more guts, he'd abandon the lot of them and rush off to seek help from Asami. He missed her. But there were people counting on him to succeed in the mission. Yaozhu and Jing and Fa would be punished if Mako abandoned them. He knew that much. And Toru would be subjected to a lifetime of abuse and neglect from a man who probably never loved her.

            He wouldn’t stand for that.

            It was near noon by the time they reached the specified address in Dragon Flats. The borough itself was just as run down and seedy as Mako remembered it being, if more populous. There were hundreds of people in the streets, and Mako didn't know if it was a result of the explosion--people in this neighborhood loved to take advantage of chaotic events--or if the place had simply changed over time. The buildings had certainly taken damage from Kuvira’s recent attack, and given the status of this section of town, he wasn’t surprised that repairs hadn’t yet been started.

            The inn at which they were to stay was no exception to the rule. Its sign hung by one string above the door and swayed eerily in the breeze, and its shutters hung loose but notably closed. In the spaces between, Mako could barely see the flickering of lights whose fixtures must have been neglected or built poorly to begin with. It was a slummy place, but Dragon Flats was the slum of Republic City, and it happened to be the slum where Mako had grown up.

            "You're late," said an old, rasp voiced woman when Mako led his quad inside. For a moment, he hadn't known from where the voice had come--the place was completely empty--but as he scanned the room he saw her seated at a table in the back.

            "Long night," Mako replied. He approached the woman cautiously: Anyone in this part of town could be dangerous, even children and the elderly. He knew that first hand. "We need a room. We have reservations."

            "What number?" the woman replied coolly.

            "Four zero five," Mako said automatically. He hadn't really known the proper response to this question. He assumed that whoever oversaw the establishment would know they were coming and would be expecting them. Every time someone asked him for a number, it seemed that the one he'd been assigned by the society was the proper response.

            The old woman eyed Mako thoughtfully before rising, and as she crossed the room to a dusty wooden counter she said, "You're young for a fourth division."

            Mako imagined he'd be hearing that a lot.

            "Two rooms on the upper floor," the woman said as she came back. She brandished two rusted old keys at Mako, and as he took them he wondered exactly how many grubby hands had been on them. "Number five and six. Two beds in each. Stairs in the back."

            Mako nodded. "Thank you," he said.

            And the old lady eyed him again. This time she looked skeptical. "You're polite for a fourth division, too," she said, and all Mako could do was give her a very awkward half smile before excusing himself and his men. As they made their way toward the stairs, the old lady yelled after them, "Don't bring any trouble here!"

            Mako hoped he wouldn't.

            "Yaozhu, you're with me," Mako commanded as he ascended. "You two can take the other room. And seriously, don't get into any trouble. You're better off spending the day resting. We’ll probably have a long night."

            "Yes, sir," they echoed in response.

            Mako tossed the second key to Jing, who fumbled it clumsily before finally catching it, and with a shake of his head he opened his own door.

            As he expected, it was just as grimy as the rest of the building, but it had two beds and a radio and that was all he could really ask for. He supposed any other business could be taken care of at the tables down below.

            "What do we do now, Cap?" Yaozhu asked as he flopped on the bed nearest the door. "Can we go look around?"

            "No," Mako replied curtly. It had been fine for them to explore the boat: That was a safe place. But now they were in hostile territory and separating any more than they had to would certainly be a poor tactical decision. "We're going to stay here until we meet the Triads. You'd best get some sleep while you can."

            Yaozhu groaned his disapproval as only a teenage boy could. "But I've never been in the city before! I want to see what it's like!"

            "You'll see plenty tonight," Mako said. "Besides, there's been an attack on Republic City's soil. Police will be everywhere--they're _already_ everywhere. You saw them on the walk over here. If they peg you as a combustion bender it's off to jail with you, I guarantee it."

            "How are they going to peg me as a combustion bender?"

            Mako shrugged. It was pretty likely they wouldn’t, considering Yaozhu’s lack of distinctive markings. "We don’t want to take any chances. We lay low until we have to go out."

            Another groan, but Yaozhu didn't argue. Instead he dropped back onto the disgusting yellowed pillow and stared at the ceiling, his hands folded behind his head.

            Mako crossed the room and turned on the radio. No doubt there'd be news coverage of the attacks. Morbid as it was, he wanted to know what had happened. He wanted all the information he could get: What places had been targeted? How many people had been injured or killed? What were the nature of the attacks? Mako could guess the answers: highly populated areas, a lot of people injured or killed, and explosions.

            Yaozhu was asleep within ten minutes, radio or not, and Mako laid down on his own bed and listened for a long time. It was exactly as he'd predicted. Explosions had ripped through the Northern Water Tribe Library on the middle island, the Fire Nation Officer Candidate School in the south, and the trolley station in the north. Hundreds were injured.         Dozens had gone missing, and the radio reports suggested that the power of the blasts had obliterated the bodies entirely.

            Mako knew better. But there was nothing he could do. He'd lost this one.

            Eventually he grew tired of the repetitive reporting and flipped the radio off. For a while he lay there thinking about how close to home he was, and how far away from home he was, and how if he could get hold of a telephone he could call Asami or Korra or Tenzin or Lin or someone who could bail him out. But then he heard Yaozhu's gentle snoring and shook his head at himself. He couldn't abandon them. He could suffer a while longer if it meant that the people he'd come to care for stayed safe.

            Mako fell asleep and dreamed again of his time on the streets. He dreamed of the night they'd saved Pabu from the pythonaconda, and again the scenarios played out the same way. Bolin was getting into trouble. Mako followed him. Bolin broke into the store. Mako followed him. Bolin almost died.

            How many times in their young lives had Mako saved him only to have him gone in the end, anyway?

            The thought startled him to waking. It was dark, and Yaozhu was sitting on the bed happily tinkering with the radio, flipping between the evening news reports, pro-bending coverage, and at least three different music stations. He'd kept the volume low, and Mako appreciated his attempts at courtesy, but when Yaozhu noticed him awake he perked up and beamed.

            "I've never gotten to play with a radio before! My parents always told me to keep my hands off the ones in our village."

            "It's not a toy," Mako replied, deadpan.

            "Listen!" Yaozhu cranked the volume on a jazzy station, and the louder the music got the wider his smile became. But when Mako didn't smile back, he lowered the volume and his smile diminished slightly. He looked back at the radio in amazement. "I wonder how it works."

            Jinora could've explained it, Mako thought. Ikki could've probably explained it too, at this point. But they weren't here, and Mako didn't feel like discussing the minutia of sound waves and frequencies. He simply lay and listened to Yaozhu flipping the stations while occasionally giggling and gasping when he hit white noise.

            Mako sighed. "Look, kid," he said tentatively, and Yaozhu looked at him with wide eyes, "I've got something important I need to talk to you about."

            Yaozhu's eyes went wider and he killed the radio. He looked like he was terrified, like a little kid who'd been caught in a place he didn't belong. "Yes, sir?"

            "You and I are going to go on a little field trip tonight," he said. "After we're through with the Triads."

            "What do you mean?" Yaozhu had perked back up at the mention of a field trip. Mako knew that all the kid wanted to do was explore. "Where are we going to go?"

            "Before I tell you this, I need to know that you're going to keep quiet, no matter what," Mako said. "If you're going to be my number two, I've got to know you're going to stay loyal to me as your Captain."

            Now Yaozhu's eyes had widened as a result of excitement. "Your number two, sir?"

            "Yeah," Mako said, "my right-hand man. It's you. Now, can I count on you?"

            "Yes, sir!" Yaozhu cried, and he saluted stiffly. "Anything, sir!"

            "We're going to go visit a friend of mine," Mako said. "We need to let her know that I'm safe. I just want to check in a little bit and make sure that everyone I care about here is okay. You can understand that, can't you?"

            Yaozhu looked skeptical. "What do you mean?"

            "I have family here," Mako said plainly. And then he thought again of Bolin, and his throat clamped up. After a second, he said, "I want to make sure that they're safe. I want to make sure they aren't caught up in any of the planned attacks. I'm sure you'd do the same for your family if we were attacking your island."

            For a while, Yaozhu just stared, his head tilted slightly to the side. But then he nodded resolutely. "Yes, sir," he said. "Anything you ask, Cap."

            "Good. You can't tell the other two what we're doing. Don't even _think_ about it while we're on the job. This is a personal issue, and it needs to stay that way. Do you understand?"

            "Yes, sir."

            "Good. Now, let's go get some dinner before we head out."

            They stopped for Jing and Fa, who both were still sleeping, and Yaozhu beat them all down the stairs. The old lady was there again, and when Mako inquired about food, she laughed derisively at him. With a shrug to the others, Mako exited the building and sighed.

            "Looks like we're going to have to rustle something up ourselves," he said thoughtfully. "I know there's a hot pot shop around here that's pretty cheap and not complete garbage."

            "We don't have any money, sir," said Jing. He always had been the pragmatist.

            "Then we'll have to lift some," Mako said, and he turned about to face them squarely. "And you're going to leave that to me. No funny business from any of you. You follow orders. Now, let's go. Stay close."

            "Yes, sir," they chorused.

            And Mako set off.

            It had been years since he'd had to steal money, and as he searched the evening crowd for a suitable target, Mako began feeling a little nervous. If he got caught when he was a kid he could just play the innocent street rat card, and most people forgave him if he returned the goods. But now he was an adult, and he imagined that people would be far less lenient.

            But then he spotted his target and the nervousness left: A crowd of people had gathered on the corner two blocks down.

            "Yaozhu, get up here," he said, and then Yaozhu was at his side. "You see those people up there?"

            Yaozhu nodded.

            "They're probably watching some kind of street performance. People do that kind of stuff all the time around here. When we get up there, I want you to run through them to the front of the crowd, and bump into as many people as you can while you're going. Now, you might get stopped on the way out, but I'll get your back. You just have to play along."

            It was the same as he and Bolin had done, once upon a time.

            "Yes, sir!"

            "You two," Mako said, and he turned around. "Keep walking. We'll meet you three blocks straight down the way. The hot pot place is at the corner of Twelfth and Main."

            "Yes, sir."

            "Let's do this," Mako said, and again he set off.

            As they approached the crowd, Mako held his arm out to slow Yaozhu's pace, and let Jing and Fa stride on past. And once they were safely away from the area, Mako nodded at the people and said, "Make sure I can keep up with you. Don't go too crazy."

            He'd never had to explain this so thoroughly to Bolin.

            Yaozhu approached the back of the crowd and then gave an enormous and genuine "Oooh!" as soon as Mako had caught up, and then he set off at a slow but determined pace, bumping and pushing against people and occasionally uttering an excited, "Sorry!" as he did. And Mako followed behind, the same as he'd done with Bolin in their youth, and when Yaozhu bumped a suitable target, Mako would reach out and snatch their wallets.

            It was a little scary how fast it all came back.

            It took less than a minute for Yaozhu to reach the front of the crowd, and Mako held back as he broke through. Then he began calling angrily, "Yaozhu! Get back here!" and pushing his own way toward the front. "You stupid kid, get back here!"

            People eyed him angrily as he shoved past, but Mako kept on. He had to be convincing. Then he reached the front of the crowd and grabbed Yaozhu by the arm a bit too roughly.

            "Hey!" Yaozhu cried, genuinely surprised.

            "What do you think you're doing?" Mako yelled. "You can't just run off like that! You'll get kidnapped, and then what am I going to tell mom?"

            "I..." Yaozhu looked confused now, but when Mako raised his eyebrows he seemed to catch on. "I'm sorry! I was just curious and wanted--"

            "Hey! That kid stole my wallet!"

            Mako rounded, a bit startled, and watched as a fat old man pushed his way forward. Mako had indeed lifted that man's money, but his eyes were on Yaozhu alone.

            "Turn out your pockets, kid!" the old man yelled. He had gone red-faced in his rage. "Turn them out right now! If you've got my money there I'm going to take you straight to the police!"

            Yaozhu looked very afraid, and just stared at the man. "But..."

            "Turn them out," Mako said calmly, and then he turned to the old man and offered the most disarming smile he could. "You'll have to excuse him, sir. He's stupid, even for a kid brother. I'm sure you understand." Then he looked back to Yaozhu and said once more, "Do what the guy says so we can get out of here."

            Yaozhu turned out his predictably empty pockets, and the man seemed equal parts placated and even more angry. He rounded back on the crowd, searching for the next person to accuse, and as he did, Mako pushed Yaozhu roughly along by the shoulder, scolding him the whole way out.

            When they had cleared the crowd, Mako turned them down a side street and bolted. Yaozhu followed. They ran for two blocks before slowing again, and then Mako turned them onto a thoroughfare and began walking casually again.

            "What now?" Yaozhu cried, excited and breathless. "What do we do now?"

            "We go get dinner," Mako said. He reached into his own pockets. He’d grabbed four wallets in total, and he compiled the money from them, tossed them aside, and began to count. And as he counted, he couldn't help an enormous and very genuine smile. "Two hundred and thirty-three yuans. That's a nice haul."

            "Wow!" Yaozhu cried. "That much? How'd you know how to do that?"

            "I’ve been around," Mako said flatly. "Now let's hustle. The other two are waiting."

            The hot pot was the best meal Mako had eaten in a while. It was familiar and comfortable and not half as spicy as the food he'd endured at the compound. And it seemed that the others enjoyed it as well. They ate their fill to the tune of fifty-five yuans, and they left satisfied and anxious.

            It was time for the Triads.

            "We're supposed to meet them at a place called _Mr. Kong's_ ," Mako explained as they walked. "It's a Triad hangout that fronts as a dim sum place and bar. Well, that's what I was told anyway. And it's only a couple blocks from here. Not sure how it's going to go when we're inside, but it'd be good for all of you to be on the alert."

            "Yes, sir."

            Mako wasn't sure that he appreciated all the formality.

            Mr. Kong's Dim Sum Restaurant appeared to be the most well-kept property occupying the block on which it was located. It was brightly illuminated with colored lights and the lettering on its sign was large and neatly composed. Mako would have expected nothing less for a Triad front. They had to appear a legitimate business to keep the police away from them, and there was no better way to attract unwanted attention than running a dirty, bug-infested restaurant.

            Several tables were occupied, and the patrons appeared of all economic backgrounds. While there didn't appear to be any vagrants about the room, there were some in tattered clothes and worn down shoes. But most seemed as middle class folks come to a fancy restaurant for their dinner and drinks.

            They didn't stand for long before a nicely dressed young woman approached and said, "Table for how many?"

            "I've got a ten-o'clock appointment," Mako replied matter-of-factly. No sense covering it up. This lady knew where she worked.

            She gave them a skeptical look, and Mako knew at once that she must be thinking that he was young for a diplomat, and he sighed. But then her expression softened and she nodded her head. "One only, please. I'll have a table for three arranged while you wait.”

            Mako looked to the others, shrugged, and followed the girl toward the back of the room. It was fishy, yes, but Mako had no choice but to play along. Such was the way of the Triad, he knew, to use intimidation tactics to read the strength of a potential business partner. Mako had seen it a thousand times in his youth. If he kept his chin up and maintained a front of unflappable confidence, he'd be in.

            She led him through a hallway past the bathrooms and entered a door marked for employees only. Down a flight of stairs and another long hall they came across a metal door with an outside lock. The girl opened the door and motioned Mako inside.

            "Someone will be with you shortly. Please make yourself comfortable."

 _Yeah_ , Mako thought as she closed the door, _I'll be real comfy in here_.

            The room was paneled with matte metal plates and remained completely unfurnished except for a single small wooden table with two chairs, upon which there sat a pitcher and two short, wide glasses. Mako took a seat and waited.

            It took ten minutes for someone to enter the room, minutes that Mako knew were spent watching the way he carried himself through some peephole or viewport. He stood when the door opened, and turned to face whoever it was that had come in.

            A tall, thin man of about fifty proceeded toward him, and simply by the way he carried himself Mako knew that this was the man with whom he was supposed to be meeting. He was dressed professionally, but not ostentatiously, and in the world beyond this room Mako imagined that no one would think twice about seeing him at a place like Kwong’s Cuisine. This man was high class. This man was important.

            "You're younger than I figured," said the man, and it took all Mako's effort to keep his face neutral. Instead, he bowed formally, and when he rose again the man was staring at him with hard eyes. "Why'd they send you?"

            Unabashed, Mako said, "I'm here to establish a relationship."

            The man cocked his head to the side, and after a few tense moments, maneuvered around the table to sit. After he'd taken his seat, Mako sat as well, and the man poured a glass for himself and a glass for Mako. And then they sat motionless, staring at each other.

            Again, Mako was surprised at how quickly the memories came back. He'd seen this before, too, the way the bosses figured out if someone was _in_ or not. And if you weren't in, it served as a test of worthiness. Those who offered deference to the boss were allowed their due time. Those who took the initiative were denied.

            It took a long time before the man picked up his drink, and Mako followed suit without hesitation. He didn't even know what was in the cup. But when they had both replaced their glasses on the table, the old man smiled at him and said, "You represent this Guan bozo."

            "I do."

            "Your people made a mess this morning. Got the whole place up in a tizzy. What's your name, kid?"

            For a fraction of a second, Mako hesitated. It was entirely possible that someone would recognize him, if not by face then by name, especially among the Triads. Certainly, he and Bolin had been out of the game for a long time, but even through their time with Korra, underlings would occasionally proposition them with odd jobs. Mako didn't want to blow his cover. He didn't want his name floating around.

            "Yaozhu," Mako said. He didn't regret it, either. The kid wasn't known anywhere. His name would carry no significance.

            "Welcome to Republic City, Yaozhu," said the man. "Footmen call me Shirshu."

            Again, Mako worked to keep his face straight. What a dumb name for a Triad boss. He probably picked it because he thought he was _poisonous_ or something. Instead, he said, "It's an honor to meet you."

            He just had to grovel a little bit.

            "Well, let's cut the crap and get down to brass tacks, yeah, kid? What's your guy want."

            "He wants all of the Triads to serve as his eyes and ears in Republic City."

            "Recon work, then."

            "That's my understanding, sir."

            "And all of us, eh? What's he got in exchange? What's his payment? Job like that comes at a hefty price. It's trouble trying to get all us hoodlums working together."

            Mako didn't know. But he didn't have time to think, either, so he blurted, "Immunity," before his brain had caught up with his mouth. "Blanket immunity."

            Shirshu dropped his chin on his hand, one eyebrow raised, and he remained silent for an uncomfortable time. Mako knew better than to say anything before he was spoken to. Besides, he had to come up with a reasonable explanation.

            "Go on," Shirshu said at last.

            "The same thing that happened in the upper ring of Ba Sing Se is going to happen in Republic City," Mako explained. "We were responsible for that, I'm sure you know. You've seen the papers. And when we attack here more people are going to die, and more people are going to be taken. That's the way we work. In exchange for your feet on the ground and a reliable source of intel, we'll make certain that your men are well informed about the attacks, and we'll keep our dirt out of your turf."

            This seemed to set Shirshu back quite literally. He rocked back in his chair, put it up on two feet, and crossed his arms behind his head. He looked disbelieving. "That's a bold statement, kid."

            "It's a true statement," Mako replied. He tried to give his voice a steely edge, and it seemed to have worked.

            "How I know you're good for it?" Shirshu asked, giving the slightest upward tip of his chin. "For the payment? I got no dealings with you people so far, I don't know you're good for it."

            "You agree to the terms set forth by His Excellency and I'll give you information about our next attacks. Then you can make sure your men are out of harm’s way. You've seen what we can do so far, and I promise we can do much worse. It's in your interest to cooperate."

            "Sounds to me like we got a threat on our hands."

            "Not a threat," Mako explained gently. "It's just not a guarantee of safety. If you agree to the terms, we'll make sure your guys don't get caught up. If you don't agree, well," he paused, and he shrugged as if that would explain.

            Shirshu leaned forward again, his elbows on the table, and stared very hard at Mako. "You really got a pair, kid," he said after a time, "to come in here and hard ball me like this. I'll agree, I got no reason not to. Seems we can only profit off the deal. But I got one more catch."

            Mako kept a straight face, though a shot of excitement had gone through him. He didn't speak. He didn't want his elation to come through. He had to keep things on the level.

            "You got to tell me your real name." Shirshu paused, and the look on Mako's face must have given him away. "You surprised? I wasn't born yesterday. Name you gave me is pretty rare around these parts. Seems to me it's more popular on the tiny islands around the Fire Nation."

            "Maybe I'm just unique," Mako bluffed.

            Shirshu leveled a dangerous glare on Mako then, and when he spoke again his voice had gone low and icy. "I'm not stupid," he said, and the facade of tough Triad boss melted into the straightforward visage of a murderer. "You gave me a name unique to a few tribes of combustion benders in the southwest Silver Sea, and you ain't no combustion bender. What are you, kid, twenty-five? Pushing thirty? At your age, you oughta have at least a little something up here," he tapped his own forehead. "And you got nothing. So, what's your name?"

            "Mako."

            "Thought you was," Shirshu said. "I seen your face before in the papers. Big pro-bender. Why lie?"

            "Protection," Mako said honestly. "I need to keep quiet. There are a lot of people around the city that would jump at the chance to get at me."

            Shirshu nodded, an understanding look about him now. "I ain't putting my nose in your business. I want to know how you knew our protocol, though, a big shot rich guy like you."

            Mako scoffed. "Rich? I used to buzz around with the Triple Threats. Learned lightning bending from Lightning Bolt Zolt, if you're looking for dates."

            "Long time ago. Why'd you bail?"

            "Had to take care of my kid brother."

            "How noble." Shirshu stood and cast the dangerous glare on Mako again. "You got grit. I like that. Ain't often we get that in a kid your age. You can tell your guy we got a deal, but if any of our guys get caught up in your business, we got a problem. Have him send a wire with contacts. Now, what're these plans you was talking about?"

            Mako recounted the locations and times of the attacks that he'd heard while aboard the ship with as much detail as he could, and it seemed that Shirshu was satisfied.

            "You make sure I see that wire," he said as he approached the door. And then Mako was alone again.

            All Mako wanted to do when the door closed was to breathe a sigh of relief, but something felt _off_. A heaviness surrounded him, a sense of foreboding that told him that something was up. He sat and he listened.

            There were footsteps outside the door. Multiple sets of them.

            Mako hopped to his feet and rounded on the door. Shirshu must not have liked his _grit_ that much. No doubt he'd sent a few lackeys to put Mako in his place and teach him some respect. Such a thing wasn’t unheard of after a conversation like what he’d just had. But Mako already knew respect, and he wasn't about to be caught off guard.

            As the door opened, he jumped onto the chair and prepared himself for the attack. It seemed a stupid move to send a bunch of guys at him in a metal room.

            They came in swinging, two waterbenders and a firebender, and Mako ducked beneath their initial attacks. He had to act fast. He had to keep calm. There was no getting out of here without staying calm. He wound up, drew a quick, deep breath, and pulled his hands inward. He centered himself, steadied himself, and threw his arms out wide, thrusting one hand directly toward his assailants.

            The lightning intercepted the next water whip, and the waterbender who'd thrown it fell in a convulsive heap. The other two hesitated, and by the time they'd turned back around Mako had unleashed another arcing bolt, striking the floor not two feet in front of them, and as it connected it split, dropping them both like stones.

            For a moment, Mako stood there and stared, dumbfounded by the strength of his bending. His lightning had never been _that_ potent before.

            Breathless, Mako jumped from the chair and darted through the open door. Shirshu wouldn't be happy when he found out his guys had been taken out, but that's what they got for picking on someone they couldn't take. Hopefully he'd see that, and instead of sending more men after him he'd accept he'd been bested and move on.

            Mako rushed up the stairs, down the hallway, and into the almost wholly empty dining room, where he slowed to a brisk walk. He didn't want to draw attention. Nobody knew what he'd done. Nobody seemed to have been alerted to the issue, at least not yet.

            A quick glance around the room and Mako spotted the others seated at a corner table. He rushed toward them, grabbed Jing by the arm and said, "We've got to get out of here. _Now_."

            No sooner had Mako said the words than the room came alive. There wasn't enough time for him to register the change. Fire began flying in great rolling waves, and the ground beneath his feet seemed to jolt and drop.

            Someone had noticed.

            "Go!" Mako shouted, and he pushed Jing toward the door. "Get out of here!"

            As Jing and Fa rushed toward the door, Mako rounded on the crowd that had formed behind. He unleashed more lightning toward the waterbenders, dropping them in single powerful shots. A fireball came at him from the side, and as Mako turned to redirect it, he noticed Yaozhu close at his side.

            It was only now that Mako realized he'd never actually seen Yaozhu bend before, not seriously. The boy whirled about and grasped the encroaching flames, and as he turned he forced them sideways toward the crowd. As the fire spread and the benders dodged, his face scrunched up weirdly. Mako barely had time to shield himself before the explosion bloomed, and without stopping to recover from the shock he was running again. He had no choice. Yaozhu dragged him by the wrist toward the door.

            Mako had never sprinted so fast in his life as he did then, and never in such a strange path. Yaozhu had let go his arm as soon as they'd cleared the door to unleash another combustion bolt into the building, and Mako directed them down blocks and into alleyways and over fences and between shadows. He could hear the angry shouts of the Triad footmen behind him, but the longer they ran the fainter they became.

            At last, Mako and Yaozhu found a main street, and they disappeared among the late-night crowd.

            "Wow, Cap," Yaozhu said between pants after a long time walking in quiet, "that was pretty serious."

            All Mako could do was shake his head. He wondered where the other two had gone. They'd bolted quick. They had to be safe. If they were remotely smart they’d have gone back to the inn.

            "We should go back to our rooms," Yaozhu said. He sounded a little afraid, but his breaths had started coming slower. "Sir? Shouldn't we go back?"

            "No," Mako replied when his nerves had calmed. "Remember, we've got more business on the other side of town."

            "Oh. That's right."

            "We need a cab," Mako said.

            "How do we get one?"

            Mako stepped to the curb and craned his neck into the street. There weren't many cars, but the stream was steady, and within five minutes he managed to hail a taxi.

            "Where to, kids?" said the driver.

            "Downtown," Mako said. He reached into his pocket, drew out the remaining money, and then threw a hundred yuans into the front. "Get us there quick."

            "Yes, sir!" The cabbie cried. And then they were off.

            Mako dropped his head back against the seat, exhausted, and stared through the open roof to the sky. He couldn’t see the stars anymore. At the same time his stomach was flooded with adrenaline, he felt a sense of intense relief. He was out of danger. He was on the way to Beifong. Everything would be okay.

            He just hoped the other two were safe. He hoped they had gone back to their rooms.

            When Yaozhu began gasping and pointing, Mako joined him in peering at the city. It seemed like every time they passed a building more than three stories tall, Yaozhu would motion excitedly toward it. Twice he grabbed Mako's arm to draw his attention to what he must have considered to be particularly interesting buildings that more often than not turned out to be apartments. And he kept pointing out the still present piles of rubble leftover from Kuvira’s attacks and asking what in the world had happened. But Mako didn’t answer.

            "This is close enough," Mako said after a time.

            "You sure, kid?"

            "I'm sure," Mako said, and when the cabbie gave him an odd, suspicious look, he threw another twenty yuans at him. "Thanks for the lift."

            "Don’t mention it."

            Then they were on the street again, and the cab faded into the distance.

            "Why'd you have him drop us off here? Where are we going?" Yaozhu asked. "We've been walking forever already!"

            Instead of answering immediately, Mako set off at a brisk pace. He needed to think of a plan. He couldn't just waltz into headquarters: He'd be recognized, he'd cause a panic. Most of the cops there probably thought he was dead. And he needed an out, besides. He'd already made up his mind that he had to return to Fire Fountain City, and if the building was swarming with cops, he'd never get to leave.

            "We need a diversion," Mako said at last. "And you're going to do it."

            "Yes, sir," Yaozhu said automatically, and then he went all confused. "But what am I going to do?"

            "How far out can you combust?"

            Yaozhu shrugged. "I don't know. Hundred yards or so. Maybe. I've never really tried for dista--"

            "Good enough," Mako interrupted. "The buildings around here have fire escapes outside. You're going to get on top of a building and lob a few bolts at the door. And when the cops come running, you're going to lead them away from the building, all from your safe spot up high."

            When Mako looked to Yaozhu, the kid seemed terrified.

            "They're going to find me!"

            "No, they won't," Mako said, and he felt confident. "Not many of the guys on the force have dealt with combustion before. I don't think you get how rare it is in the city. They won't know how to track you if you're not too predictable. You think you can handle it?"

            "Yes, sir," Yaozhu said, but the excitement seemed to have gone out of him. "I'll do my best, sir."

            "Good. Now, make sure you don't _hurt_ anyone, yeah? Be careful. These people are innocent, they don't need to be injured."

            "Yes, sir."

            They continued the walk in silence until they could proceed no further. The closer they got to headquarters the more police they saw, and Mako didn't want to risk being spotted. Again, he ducked into an alley and peeked around the corners.

            "Okay," he said. "We're about two blocks out. You're going to keep walking, and act natural, yeah? Come here." He pointed down the road. "You see that building? The big gray one, looks like it's got wings on top?"

            "Yes, sir."

            "That's the place I need you to hit. If you keep to the alleys and head that direction you should be able to get on top of one of the apartment complexes. I can't make my move until you give me the signal."

            "What's the signal, Cap?"

            Mako heaved an enormous, exasperated sigh. Talented as he might be, Yaozhu certainly had a dull streak. "The explosion, Yaozhu. I can't move till you've distracted them."

            "Oh. All right."

            "Move quick. I'll be waiting. If you get spooked, you can meet me back here. Can you handle that? Keep to the alleys. Keep to the shadows. If you need, you should be able to duck into one of the apartment buildings. If you act natural, nobody will care where you are or what you're doing. Just don't look like a criminal."

            "Yes, sir."

            With another stiff, slightly awkward salute, Yaozhu set off, and Mako watched him disappear among the buildings.

            And then he watched. And he waited. And he watched, and waited and watched and waited, and a bubble of anxiety swelled inside of him. It had been too long, he thought. Had the Triads followed them? No, there was no way they could've tracked them this far. The city was too big. Or had Yaozhu been caught by the police? They were crawling all over. Maybe things had changed since he was on the streets. Maybe the police actually cared about vagrant kids now.

            But then he saw it. An enormous ball of fire split the road right outside headquarters, and just as Mako predicted, the cops went running. They poured out of the building, they swarmed from the street corners, and as more explosions bloomed they struck off in pursuit.

            With a shake of his head, Mako ran. For the first time, he was glad for all the physical training he'd endured after his capture. He'd never have been able to do so much running on so little sleep before all of this.

            Another explosion bloomed in the distance.

            Mako sneaked inside, and just as he'd predicted, the lobby sat empty. Every desk had been abandoned, though he could hear the noise of telephones ringing upstairs. The dispatchers must have stayed, must have been absolutely inundated with calls. Between the attacks that morning and Yaozhu now, the city had had a very bad day.

            He approached Beifong's office with a surprising degree of terror, but when he pushed the door open and saw her frantically rummaging through her things, her hand on the phone, relief flooded through him so powerfully that he thought he'd cry.

            "Hey, Chief."

            She stopped dead. And then she looked at him with a face he'd never seen before. She'd gone white, her eyes wide, her jaw slack. It was like she'd seen a ghost. When Mako stepped inside and closed the door behind him, she was still staring.

            It looked to Mako like she was struggling to form a word. He found it sort of amusing, how off guard he'd caught her. But then he felt a little guilty, too. Of course, she wouldn't be expecting him. A dozen explosions had struck right outside her door not five minutes prior. She was probably getting ready to head into the fray herself.

            "Sit down," Mako said, a touch of concern in his voice. "You look like you're about to pass out."

            She sat heavily. And she kept staring. And then in a very small, slightly weak voice she said, "Where in the world have you been?"

            "It's a long story," Mako said, and he crossed the room to peek out her window toward the street. "And we don't have a lot of time."

            "What do you mean we don't have time?"

            She seemed to have recovered quickly enough, judging by the strengthening tone in her voice, but when Mako looked back to her she remained seated.

            He leaned his back against the window and crossed his arms over his chest. "We don't have time," he said. "As plain as that. I've got intel for you, and then I've got to get out of here again."

            "What?"

            Mako's brow furrowed. "Chief, snap out of it. This is important."

            She stood, and Mako knew that he had her attention.

            "There was an attack on the city early this morning," Mako began, and when Lin opened her mouth to say something he held up his hand for silence. "I know that because those explosions were the distraction for my boat to dock here." He paused and looked at the floor. "And by _my boat_ , I mean the boat that brought me here. And that's not going to be the end of it."

            "Clearly!" Beifong shouted. "What just happened outside my--"

            "That was my cover," Mako explained. "I couldn't just waltz in here with the building full of cops."

            He'd dumbfounded her again.

            "Look, Chief, you've got a big problem on your hands that has nothing to do with the last ten minutes, okay? Tomorrow, all day tomorrow, there are going to be attacks on the city. They're targeting the Cultural Center and Little Ba Sing Se. And then they're going to--"

            "Who is _they_?" Beifong stammered.

            "The Society," Mako replied.

            "How do you know that?"

            The office door flew open before Mako could respond, and Yaozhu practically fell into the room. He looked like he'd just finished running a marathon, and bent low with his hands on his knees, panting like a dog.

            "What are you doing here?" Mako shouted. "You didn't bring them back with you, did you?"

            "No, sir," Yaozhu gasped. "No, they didn't follow, but I got scared."

            "No, sir?" Beifong echoed, and she looked to Mako with a disgusted look. "What... _What_?"

            "Chief, this is Yaozhu," Mako said by way of introduction. "He's my second in command."

            "Second...In...Command..."

            "Yeah."

            Yaozhu stood straight and beamed, and then his face went blank. "Wait a minute, Cap. Is she an earthbender?"

            "Yes."

            Yaozhu jumped, startled. "B-b-but, sir!" he stammered. "Earthbenders are dangerous!"

            "No, they're not," Mako said, exasperated.

            Beifong sat down again, and resumed looking stupefied as she stared between Mako and Yaozhu. Her eyes lingered for a long time on the kid’s face, and it looked to Mako as though she had recognized something about him.

            "Okay," Mako said, "let me start over. And I don't want either of you to interrupt me. We don't have enough time for that. Now listen to me very carefully. There are attacks planned for tomorrow starting at something like one o'clock. There'll be one at the Cultural Center and a few in Little Ba Sing Se. I don't know exactly where. And then at evening shift change they're going to target headquarters. There'll be explosions, bigger than the ones Yaozhu can make by a long shot, and people are going to get hurt and people are going to be taken."

            "What do you mean, _taken_?" Beifong asked, but she stopped short when Mako glared at her.

            "You have to make sure that those places are evacuated as thoroughly as possible. They'll be targeting firebenders, but they'll take any bender they can get their hands on. They bring them back to the island to work as slaves. Look, I know this is crazy, but you've got to take me at face value here, okay, Chief? They’re going to kidnap the benders and kill anyone else who sees them.”

            "I still can't believe you're standing in front of me right now," she said. "Two hours ago, you were dead, and now you're standing in front of me telling me my city is under attack."

            "I know," Mako said. "But you've got to listen, and you've got to believe what I'm saying here, okay? There are those attacks planned for tomorrow, but those aren't the only ones. Our ship is docked at the south harbor, and we're going to set out again in a couple days. Like, three days? Two days?”

            "Two days, sir," Yaozhu said. “We set out at sundown the day after tomorrow.”

            "Two days," Mako echoed. “And when we leave, they’re going to target the pro-bending arena to cover our tracks. That’ll be on a Friday, right around game time."

            "Stop for a minute," Beifong said. "Why is he calling you _sir_?"

            "Because I'm his Captain," Mako said plainly. He didn't have time for this kind of nonsense. "That doesn't matter. We're leaving the south harbor in two days, and there's going to be another attack to draw attention away from the docks. They’re going to hit the arena. Now, I know this is going to be hard, but you _can't_ stop the ship. We _have_ to go back."

            "What?"

            Mako drew a deep breath. "There are people I have to take care of," he said slowly. "Back on the island. There are people relying on me to save them. And if I don't get back, they'll be in more trouble than you could possibly believe. You have to keep your officers away from the south docks so we can get out of here safely."

            Beifong's face had screwed up in disbelief.

            "Can you take care of evacuations, Chief?" Mako asked. He had to get this through to her. He had to get her to acknowledge the importance of what was happening.

            She nodded.

            "Good. You should also know that the Triads are involved now. Well, they’re _kind of_ involved. They’re doing recon."

            "How could you possibly know that?" Beifong asked, incredulous.

            "Because I just got done negotiating the agreement with them."

            The disbelieving face again. "Whose side are you on?"

            Mako shook his head. He didn't know what to say. He'd thought on that question so much in the last few weeks that he couldn't keep it straight himself. He cared deeply for Republic City, but he cared for his quad. He cared for Toru. He cared about helping the people who had been taken, who were trying to make the best of a terrible situation the same was as he had done. All he could say was, "I don't even know any more."

            Then there was silence.

            "Cap, we need to go," Yaozhu said. "We need to make sure that Jing and Fa got out okay."

            Mako looked to him and nodded. Then he looked back to Beifong and took an extremely deep breath. There was one more point of business to attend to before he left. "How are Korra and Asami?"

            "They left early this morning to go investigate the Boiling Rock."

            Mako balked. "You got my note?"

            "Yeah, we got it. Too late to do any good, though."

            The pit of grief opened up again, and Mako stared at the floor. He couldn't bring himself to look at her now. He felt ashamed. He should've done more. He wanted to cry. But it was too late now. Bolin was gone.

            "Where is he?" Mako asked, a waver in his voice.

            "Where is who?"

            "Bolin. Where is he?"

            "Suyin took him to Zaofu."

            Mako nodded. It made sense. Bolin was more a part of the Beifong family than any in Republic City, even counting their cousins and grandmother. It made perfect sense to bury him at their home. But at the same time, he felt sad again. He felt disappointed. He'd desperately wanted to visit the grave. He wanted to pay his respects.

            He wanted to apologize.

            "Mako!" Yaozhu cried, apparently oblivious to Mako's distraction, and at the sound of Yaozhu calling his name, Mako startled back to reality. Yaozhu _never_ said his name. When Mako looked up at him he was pointing out the window behind him. "They're coming back!"

            Mako wheeled about and stared outside, too. Yaozhu was right. The cops were swarming back to the building. They didn’t look pleased.

            "Yaozhu," Mako said, and he wrenched open the window, "distraction, now. _Carefully_."

            Mako stepped away from the window and allowed Yaozhu the room to do what he needed to do, and he looked back to Beifong with new purpose.

            "I'm sorry, Chief. I have to go. We're stationed in Fire Fountain City. There are hundreds of people there, including captive waterbenders and earthbenders. I don't know if they have any airbenders, but I know the other two for fact. Get a group together and storm the island, but be careful when you do it. There are innocent people there, and I don't want them to get hurt because of me."

            Yaozhu shot a combustion bolt across the way.

            Beifong blinked very hard and stared at Yaozhu again. The look of recognizance flashed on her face.

            "Yeah," Mako said flatly. He knew exactly what she was thinking. "He's a combustion bender. But he’s a good kid."

            Again, it looked to Mako like Beifong was flailing for words that wouldn't come.

            "Send help," Mako said. "But wait until we've gone. I'll be back on the island in five days or so. Don't delay our boat, and watch for the attacks." He didn't want for Beifong to respond before he turned to Yaozhu and said, "Let's get out of here."

            They vaulted out the window, and didn't look back.


	23. The Boiling Rock

            Korra, Asami, and Opal were long gone by the time the explosions ripped through Republic City's population centers. They departed via sky bison almost as soon as Suyin's airship had cleared the landing pad, and had passed what they imagined to be an uneventful morning in comfortable quiet.

            In the days prior to their departure and in what little time wasn’t occupied by the drama surrounding Bolin, Opal and Lin had plotted a course that would lead them over the Mo Ce Bay and toward the western reaches of United Republic territory. Such a path would allow them ample opportunity to stop for rest, and according to their calculations, they would arrive at the island where the Boiling Rock prison was located some time on the second day of their trip, as long as they stopped as planned in the Hu Xin Peninsula. Little else had been decided about the trip, so the girls spent the first day plotting.

            Lin had done all of the talking with Firelord Izumi and had given them precious little information to work with. The only new information was that they were allowed full run of the place, as it was supposed to have been abandoned years ago, and the Firelord dearly desired for it to be destroyed altogether. Lin said that Izumi hated that such a horrible place still stood and would consider it a favor to the Fire Nation if Korra, Opal, and Asami managed to clear it out.

            Asami led their discussion now. Always prepared, she'd brought along maps and all manner of supplementary information about the Boiling Rock, including its history of use during the Hundred Year War and prior. By mid-afternoon on their first day of travel the three girls had ironed out most of the details: They would skirt the island, enter from the west at sundown, drop Juicy at the outer beach, and proceed through the volcanic outer ring with earthbending. Once inside, they would cross the island’s famed boiling moat using waterbending, and then scale the tall interior walls into the compound via airbending. It was a solid plan, providing there weren't troops waiting for them.

            It was a solid plan even if there _were_ troops waiting; it would just require a little more finesse.

            Having settled on their plans, they passed the afternoon in even more quiet, and Korra couldn’t decide whether it was because nobody had anything to say, because they were all just a little nervous about their plan, or because this had been the first real opportunity for quiet that any of them had had in almost three weeks. While Korra thought, Opal napped and Asami read, and as Korra stared out over the sprawling landscape of the United Republic passing below, ideas floated through her mind without much direction. She spent a considerable time worrying about the plan, about ambush, about what they might find at the Boiling Rock that could prove surprising. The combustion bender had labeled it as _the quarantine_ , and had explained that newly acquired prisoners were sent there for processing. Korra imagined it would be crawling with people. She wondered how many of those people would be hostile.

            When that worry passed on, she thought about Mako and whether he was still alive out there. She wondered if they were too late. His note had mentioned that he'd been relocated to Fire Fountain City, and Korra couldn't help but wonder why she wasn't going there instead of the Boiling Rock. But then she settled and decided that they needed to take things one step at a time, to be patient. If the Boiling Rock was where prisoners went first, then it was where they needed to go first, too.

            Suddenly she found herself considering what might happen if they found Mako alive, and her insides started turning in knots. She imagined the horror he must have suffered with the explosion in Ba Sing Se and the confusion that surrounded it. If he was alive, he might be hurt. If he wasn’t hurt, he’d be lonely and miserable.

            And what if he came home? How would Mako react if he saw Bolin? When Korra thought of that the knots tightened. Even if Mako remained unchanged and healthy, the opposite couldn't be said of his brother. Bolin had changed so much in the time Mako had been gone, and not all of it had been for the better. In fact, now she thought on the matter, very little of it had been for the better. She imagined that Mako probably wouldn't approve of the anger or the sarcasm. He definitely wouldn't approve of the violent mood swings. But he might be happy that the immature joking had stopped, and Korra wondered if that exchange was worth it in the end.

            She hadn't really considered that before, the stark difference. All she knew was that everything Bolin did seemed to fall into one extreme or another, and that outside of that morning at the breakfast table she hadn't seen him look legitimately happy since before the funeral, and she couldn’t even be sure if his happiness that morning had been caused by genuine feeling or if it was the surge of endorphins after his night with Opal. Otherwise, he certainly had smiled and seemed occasionally content, but everywhere he went he carried some kind of burden, especially since the collapse. He really _had_ endured a horrible month, and there was no arguing it had taken its toll on him to disastrous ends.

            For the first time since they'd kissed, Korra thought about Bolin and didn't feel the weightless flutter in her chest. Instead, a sick feeling came to the pit of her stomach. He'd been so deceptive in the last weeks that Korra wondered if even Suyin's supervision would be enough, and she wondered if he’d make any improvement even in Zaofu. She hoped he would. And the tiniest part of her hoped no trace of Mako would ever be found, if only to spare Bolin the stress of dealing with _another_ major development.

            Plus, he'd be devastated if he learned everything they had been keeping from him. Korra cringed despite herself when she considered the possibility: If she thought Bolin had exploded at her before over little actions and slips of the tongue, she imagined it would be child's play compared to how he'd explode if he discovered that everyone had been keeping the whole truth away from him. He’d never forgive them if Mako was actually alive and he found out that they had suspected it all along.

            The sick feeling persisted until well after they had set up camp for the evening, and though Korra tried to act natural, Opal and Asami both seemed to notice her uneasiness.

            Together the three settled in the middle of a plain on the Hu Xin peninsula, near enough to the coast that their meager camp overlooked a wide expanse of the Mo Ce Sea, which connected them to Fire Nation territory. They watched the water as they took their dinner, and after sundown they unrolled their packs and sat around a gently crackling fire.

            Korra wondered if the other two felt as anxious about their investigation and its aftermath as she did. She wondered if they had the same worries about Bolin that she did, at least with regard to the Mako situation. Of course they wouldn’t be worried about any _other_ awkwardness.

            She kept her eyes on the flickering fire, and out of the blue she said, "What do you think we're going to find tomorrow?"

            "I don't know," Asami said. "Maybe a prison full of people. Maybe nothing."

            "Maybe we'll find evidence that there _were_ people," Opal said. "But I think it'll depend on how long ago Mako sent that note. If these people wanted to keep under wraps they'd stay on the move, wouldn't you think?"

            "You'd think so," Korra agreed feebly. She drew abstract shapes in the dirt with her finger. "I guess it doesn't really matter though, does it? We've got to go no matter what we might find."

            For a while the three stayed quiet, and the only noises were the wind, Juicy's moist snoring, and the crackling of their continually dying campfire. Korra was content to sit there and watch the flame. She would just as soon go to bed as carry on any more conversation. She didn't really feel like chatting, anyway.

            Asami and Opal, however, seemed keen to talk now their bellies were full of Pema’s home-cooked steam buns.

            "So what's been eating you all day?" Asami asked Korra, apparently from nowhere.

            Korra looked up from the dirt, startled. "What?"

            "You've been all quiet today, and you look really stressed out. I know you better than to think you're just nervous about tomorrow. Besides, you don’t get nervous about this kind of thing, a go-getter like you."

            "Oh," Korra said. Asami had taken away her excuse, so she floundered to find another one that skirted the truth. "It's just that a lot has happened lately." She felt stupid as soon as she’d said the words. It felt like she’d been saying that phrase too much lately.

            "I think we can all agree with that," Opal said. Korra could hear the smile in her voice without even looking at her. "I think we're probably through the worst of it now, though."

            "You think so?" Asami asked.

            Opal nodded happily. "I do, really. We're following up on the leads Aunt Lin got about Mako and doing everything we can to find him, if he’s out there. Aunt Lin is in control of things in the city. I'm pretty sure my mom is going to take good care of Bolin." She paused thoughtfully and looked out the corner of her eye toward the sky. "And by that I mean that she's going to rule him with an iron fist. If she's watching over him, he'll have no choice but to get better."

            Asami and Opal shared a laugh, but Korra didn't join in. She didn't think it was very funny at all. Iron fist or no, Bolin was stubborn, and he'd proven that beyond any manner of doubt. And he’d proven himself a better liar than anyone had ever given him credit for, too, even if it had been simple omission instead of blatant dishonesty.

            "And if we manage to find Mako, things will get even better," Asami said. Her voice had taken on the same jovial tone that Opal's had. "We can bring him home and that'll make Bo happy. Maybe it'll pull him out of his hole."

            "Maybe," Opal agreed. "I would hope so, considering that’s the whole reason he fell in the hole to begin with."

            Korra hoped so, too, but she didn't cling to it. Sure, Bolin might be happy that Mako was alive, but he'd be livid to find out they had known all along. And there was always the complication of the collapse, and nobody knew for sure how to determine what of his recent behavior had been caused by that and what had been caused by the loss of his brother.

            "I didn't say thank you," Opal said, and when Korra looked up a bit startled from her thoughts she noted that Opal was talking to her, "for talking some sense into me last night."

            All Korra could offer was a weak grin.

            "So, how are things with you two?" Opal continued, her good mood unsoured by Korra's lackluster response.

            Asami shrugged and glanced at Korra. Her cheeks had taken on a slightly rosier tint than usual. She smiled, then looked at Opal and said, "I think things are going well. Nothing too crazy yet, but we're getting used to each other."

            "I'm so happy for you two," Opal said. "I was surprised when I found out you were together, but I think you're a really good match."

            Korra felt her face growing a little bit warm. She looked back at the dirt and listened to Asami giggle.

            "We're taking it slow," Asami said. "But I hear you and Bolin are getting pretty serious."

            Korra looked up, startled again, and glanced between Asami and Opal. Both of them still wore enormous smiles, but they had turned a little naughty, like a couple of little girls discussing a schoolyard crush. Asami had taken to leaning forward, her elbows propped on her legs. Opal had covered her reddening face with her hands.

            "I guess so," said Opal. Despite her blushing, a hint of disappointment had crept into her voice. Korra wondered if Asami had noticed it. "But we've been together a long time, too."

            "How are you holding up?" Asami asked. "I mean, you personally, with everything that's going on, that is."

            "Oh, I'm okay," Opal replied coolly. "Hanging in there, you know. There's not much else I can do." She smiled. "But I'd be lying if I said it wasn't difficult. I don't know that I really like how... Cynical... He's gotten. It's not necessarily _bad_ , I guess. It's just _weird_. I’d expect that attitude more out of Grandma Toph than out of him."

            "But he's been getting better,” Asami said, and now she leaned back, too. “He can talk normally now. And he definitely looks better than he did,"

            Opal went very red then, and her smile widened. She looked sheepishly at the ground.

            "What?" Asami asked playfully. "What's that look for?"

            Opal laughed. "You're right. He _does_ look better."

            Korra watched Asami think about the statement, watched her think about Opal's reaction, and watched as the truth dawned on her. When she had recognized the truth, Asami's grin turned very mischievous. Korra liked the look on her.

            "Oh?" Asami said, teasing. "What's that mean?"

            "Oh, come on!" Opal cried, exasperated. "I don't want to talk about this!"

            "You can't say something like that and not talk about it," Asami said. "Come on. It's just us!" She motioned between her and Korra. "And what are we going to do? Right, Korra?"

            Korra worried that the half grin she produced looked more awkward than agreeable.

            Red-faced, Opal began poking at the dirt the same as Korra had done earlier. She looked profoundly nervous. "I don't know," she stammered. "I shouldn't say anything, but... I don't know. Oh, it's horrible!"

            Asami's face went serious, then. She looked a little concerned. "What?" She asked gently. "Is something wrong?"

            "I feel guilty!" Opal cried, though she didn't sound particularly off-put. She sounded more exasperated; somehow frustrated with her inability to articulate what she was thinking. "He didn't eat and dropped all that weight, but then he was training with Korra and... You know…" She looked at Korra as though begging Korra to step in.

            "Yeah, we trained a lot," Korra agreed lamely.

            "And, well..." Opal paused, the nervousness coming back. "He's not my big armadillo-bear anymore. He's leaned out a bit. I feel bad to say it, but it's kind of nice, too. He was cute before. Now he's _gorgeous_."

            Asami fell backward with an enormous laugh, and she laid there for a while stricken by the giggles. When she righted herself, tears had collected in her eyes. She rubbed them away.

            "It's not funny!" Opal protested. "I didn't mean it to sound so shallow!"

            "It's not shallow," Asami said. "Everyone likes a good-looking partner, that's why I've got Korra!" She elbowed Korra playfully, and Korra offered her lackluster grin again.

            "I'm glad you think so, but I still feel bad," Opal said again, and despite what she said, her embarrassment seemed to be easing. "You two are good together, but I guess I already said that."

            The three of them fell quiet again, and this time it was a content, happy quiet. At least it was content for Opal and Asami. Opal kept staring at the dirt, her face all red, and Asami kept looking between Opal and Korra as though there was something else she wanted to say, some other avenue of conversation she wanted to pursue. Korra knew the look well enough; it was the look that said Asami wanted to engage in some healthy, feminine gossip. But Korra didn't want to.

            When Asami began asking Opal more personal questions, questions about what it felt like to be kissed and touched and have all manner of intimate contact that they hadn't yet shared together, Korra began to feel distinctly uncomfortable. She grew more uncomfortable still when Opal answered candidly. And when Opal and Asami began theoretically comparing their experiences in kissing, Korra stood and turned to leave.

            "Where are you going?" Asami asked, interrupting Opal mid-sentence. "Are you okay?"

            Korra looked down, mustered a smile, and said, "Bathroom!"

            She walked away.

            She just needed to walk. And she needed to stop listening to the two of them discussing boys. Korra didn't want to think about that sort of thing at a time like this, not when such a serious day was ahead of them. She didn't want to remember Bolin hugging her just that morning, and she didn't want the memory of that warm, tingling feeling to remind her of the night he'd kissed her.

            But the thoughts came anyway, and she hated them.

            Korra stayed away from camp for a while, for longer than it would take any reasonable person to use the bathroom, and by the time she returned the fire had died completely, and both Opal and Asami had laid down. Neither of them was sleeping, but they weren't talking either, and Korra took that as a blessing.

            "You were gone a while," Asami said sleepily. "Everything okay?"

            Korra nodded and sat, grabbed her pack, and began situating herself for sleep. "Yep," she said as genuinely as she could. "I just wanted to walk around a little bit and see what was around here. I got a little distracted is all."

            "Okay," Asami said. Korra noted a definite skepticism in her voice. "But you _are_ okay, right?"

            "Of course," Korra said.

            "You're just acting a little weird lately, that's all," Asami said. Korra wished she'd let that particular topic die. "You've been acting all nervous all day. I figured after dinner you'd calm down a little."

            "Just nervous about tomorrow!" Korra said, and she lay down. "Better get to sleep; we've got a long day ahead."

            "You're right," Asami agreed, but she didn’t sound entirely convinced. When Asami said, "Good night," Korra was glad she hadn’t pressed the matter.

            Opal and Korra both echoed their good nights, and the camp went silent. Asami and Opal were asleep within ten or fifteen minutes, but Korra lay awake staring at the sky, all manner of thoughts flooding her head. She could've participated in their kissing conversation easily, and maybe she should've to cover her embarrassment. Asami seemed suspicious now. No, Asami _was_ suspicious now. And had Korra participated, she would've been able to end the _great kissing debate_ singlehandedly and without much contemplation on her end. Mako had never been one for intimacy; it was always a little bit awkward because he never seemed all that confident in himself, at least in those matters. Bolin had been bold and confident and remarkably suave. Asami had been a little bit weird, but not wholly unpleasant, and Korra imagined that with a little more practice it could be enjoyable.

            But for now, she knew firsthand who was better.

 

            The next morning, all of Korra's nervousness shifted completely from the complexity of inter-friend relationships to the very real possibility that they'd meet trouble at the Boiling Rock. Asami and Opal both seemed to share in her worry, as neither of them said a word about the way Korra was acting or about their interactions the night prior.

            They set out early and passed the trek in silence until they began to see the islands, which comprised the Fire Nation archipelago rising distant out of the sea. Opal navigated northward to skirt the Boiling Rock proper, and they ate and recuperated on Lengyao Island, a large and vaguely circular plot of land straight north of their destination. Then, when the sun began to descend toward the horizon, they secured their provisions in Juicy’s back-saddle and set out again.

            By the time the island came into view the sun was low in the sky. They could see little detail about the place, except for its distinctive geology and the huge plume of steam that rose above it. It looked as a volcano with its high exterior walls, but in its hollow center rose a smaller island upon which was housed the Boiling Rock prison. This was their final destination.

            Opal coaxed Juicy to the ground on the western beach outside of the enormous rock walls, and once Korra and Asami had disembarked, sent the sky bison on its way. Then, the three girls looked to each other, shared a collective nod, and set about their business.

            With a sweep of her foot and a thrust of her hands, Korra parted the exterior of the island easily, leading them through the rock at an incline to avoid any potential contact with the boiling water beyond. They came out the other side some minutes later, emerging onto a small stone outcropping of Korra's making, which afforded them a bottom-up view of the island in the center of the moat.

            The whole place was dark, and not just for the night.

            Korra stepped toward the bubbling water and thrust her hands downward, drew them apart, and separated it at its bank. Then she said, "Stay close," and stepped in.

            Even with Korra's bending, the walk across the bottom of the sulfuric lake was overwhelmingly hot and more than a little bit scary. All around them the water boiled and shifted, and the going was slow. It was hard to bend the water, and every ounce of Korra's focus stayed on maintaining their tiny bubble of safety, until at last they surfaced at the base of the Boiling Rock's enormous inner wall.

            Korra and Opal wrapped their arms around Asami's shoulders and together airlifted themselves to the top of the towering rock, and even this close the place remained utterly dark. From their high perch they could see no people milling about and no activity anywhere on the grounds or in the windows. Even the famed gondola, the vehicle that ferried inmates and personnel between the outer rock wall and the prison's inner workings, sat still and dark at the far end of its track.

            The place looked to be abandoned, but Korra kept up her guard.

            On the one hand, she truly hoped that there would be no one inside. On the one hand she hoped for a smooth, quick look about. But on the other, she wanted someone to be there. She wanted a person beyond Beifong's captive combustion bender to interrogate. She wanted someone who stood on the inside of the society's circle, closer to the middle than the edge, and Korra figured that anyone manning _the quarantine_ would fit the bill nicely.

            "We stay together," Korra whispered. "No matter what. We don't want to be caught off guard, even if it does look dead here."

            Opal and Asami heartily agreed, and the three set off down the slope.

            Korra knew from the very beginning that this place had never been in good shape. Its exterior fencing had crumbled, its foundation had cracked in a thousand places, and the enormous prison structure itself appeared to be leaning very slightly on its base. The building was made of rusted metal, which at one point seemed to have been painted Fire Nation red, and all of its windows had been covered with thick metal bars that had gone dull from exposure to the elements.

            Nothing had been left behind, at least not in the yard where the three girls stood. Not a single scrap of debris littered the ground anywhere in sight. There existed no evidence that anyone had inhabited this place for a long, long time.

            But then Korra thought about it. It was _too_ clean. Certainly if the prison had been abandoned decades ago there would be some evidence; bird droppings or debris carried in on the winds. Nature should have taken its hold after a while the same as it would have for any other abandoned man-made structure. But there was nothing. It looked to Korra as though the yard had been thoroughly cleaned, scrubbed of anything that might indicate there had ever been people there at all. Such cleanliness meant that human hands had to have been involved.

            "Stay close, and be careful," Korra repeated again once their sweep of the outside was complete. Then she led them to the red metal doors that served as the prison's single entry point, thrust her hands forward, and tore the metal apart from its center. Clearly this place had never been used to house earthbenders, Korra thought, because they would've been able to escape far too easily.

            The hallway into which the girls entered was darker than they imagined it would be, with tiny particles of dust floating all around like thick fog. The waning sun filtered in through rectangular glass windows in each door, spaced out evenly along the corridor, and aside from their own tentative footsteps, the place was completely silent.

            Korra led the way, producing a bright flame in her palm to light their path, which only made things creepier. The light flickered off of reflective panels outside each door, and as they passed by, Korra, Opal, and Asami peeked inside as they could. From what little they were able to see, the rooms here were empty except for rusted old furniture, which looked to Korra as though it belonged in a hospital circa the Hundred Year War. Each room seemed to house a bed or a clinical chair, a sink or basin, and a wooden ladder back chair. A thin layer of dust had settled on everything.

            As they walked, they discussed the possible uses for such rooms, and ultimately decided that they were, in some capacity, healing chambers similar to what they might find in a small-town hospital. It seemed the only thing that made any sense and would account for all the various items within each.

            Of these doors, only two were unlocked, and within them Opal found a few papers bearing the names, occupations, birth places, and residences of people none of them had ever heard of, and each was marked over with a large red X. She also found a single apron that looked well worn and yellowed. The apron she left, but the papers she collected and pocketed for future investigation. 

            After a time, they came to the end of the initial corridor, which opened into an enormous square room with multiple stories that seemed to spiral inward toward a central courtyard on the bottom floor. Each wall was lined with rows of unmarked doors, and all of these were unlocked. They weren't very interesting, though.

            The girls recognized these tiny rooms as cells inside which they imagined quarantined firebenders or other prisoners must have been held. Each contained a tiny bed--really an inches thick mattress seated atop a few slatted boards--a small table, and a chair. Between the furniture was barely enough floor space to maneuver around, let alone find a comfortable place to sprawl. Further, each room contained the same selection of books stacked upon its table, consisting of old Fire Nation propaganda that dated to the Hundred Year War. Common among them all was a copy of either _A History of Fire Nation Conquest_ or _Firelord Sozin: A Biography_.

            None of the girls had ever read either book, but Asami lifted a copy of each to take back home. It could be that they would find some information inside that could be of use in their search. Maybe.

            By the time they finished their sweep of the first cell block, the sun had dipped well below the horizon and any natural light they had been afforded disappeared entirely. While they had been on high alert upon entering the place, they felt worse now it was dark, and they kept close to each other.

            They wandered through another identical cell block, which contained the same effects as the first and was equally barren otherwise. Eventually they trekked through a door labeled _Cell Block C_ , and a marked change came upon the building.

            At any point prior to this threshold, everything had been poorly cared for and seemed mostly to have fallen apart. What few items were still in good repair had been antiquated at best. This place, a block of the same layout as the prior two, had been extremely well cared for, renovated, and upon first glance lacked the same coating of dust that had settled everywhere else. Further, there were what appeared to be personal belongings in the rooms, and the rooms themselves were easily twice the size as the other cells.

            Korra couldn't wager a guess as to why that was.

            A shining metal plate bearing one or two names had been affixed to each door, which Opal and Asami agreed represented the people housed inside. Asami took down each of these names in turn, and whenever they were presented with an unlocked door, they entered.

            They found everything from cups and plates to books and photographs all littered around the space, and it seemed to Korra that whoever had stayed here left in a hurry. It seemed to Korra that they hadn't even had time to pack. In some cases they hadn’t even had time to finish their meal.

            "I bet these were officer's quarters," Asami said as she meandered through one of the rooms. She picked up a cup and looked inside. "Tea."

            "So what?" Korra said.

            "Well, left around for too long in a place like this, the tea would either evaporate or mold," Asami reasoned, and she thrust the cup toward Korra. "It's still pretty clear."

            Korra looked into the cup.

            "So that means this place hasn't been abandoned for long," Opal said. "A couple of days at most."

            It made sense, Korra thought. It accounted for the disparity between the cell blocks. She figured that Block A and Block B must've housed prisoners or quarantines--nobody would really care too much about their living conditions--and Block C, with its cushioned beds and plush chairs, must indeed have housed high-ranking personnel.

            "So what made them leave?" Korra asked after a while. "If they were settled in here, why would they leave so quickly that they couldn't even pack up their things?"

            Asami poked her head back into the hallway. "Well, if what we're assuming is right, they probably didn't have much notice."

            "I wonder if they knew about Mako's letter," Opal said. "Would explain why they left so fast. If they found out Mako warned us about this place, they might've abandoned it so we didn't catch them."

            "Makes sense," Korra agreed.

            But that didn't bode well for Mako, she thought. If he was indeed stationed at Fire Fountain City, as his note said, and someone found out that he'd leaked information the odds were good that he'd be punished pretty severely, if not killed outright. A lump of anxiety formed in her throat when she thought about it, but at the same time, she felt glad they hadn't told Bolin that Mako might be alive. It would've been far worse to get his hopes up, only to dash them in the end.

            He'd been unstable enough as is.

            The remainder of the compound yielded little of note. Opal collected a few papers that she'd found in a glass-paneled room that the girls imagined had been used for conferences. They retired outside and combed through the exterior once more.

            "What about the gondola?" Asami asked. "Might be something in there."

            Korra shrugged. "If you think you can get it over here."

            Asami made her way to the operating mechanism and began to tinker. She hummed a little bit to herself and made several mentions of how old its interior components were, but eventually she managed to get the thing powered on with an enormous _clunk_.

            The gondola began its long, slow trek across the sulfuric moat, and as it traveled it creaked and swayed on its cabling. It looked to Korra that it might fall down at any moment, like even the slightest breeze might blow it off its track. She felt glad that they hadn’t needed to ride it across.

            After a time, the car came to a halt at its dock, and Korra took a look inside. On its interior console sat a fresh-looking logbook, which she tossed to Opal, and a few littered remnants of scrap that seemed unimportant at best. There was no layer of dust here, which she attributed to the open windows and constant sea breeze, but there was the faintest smell of _something_ cutting through the sulfurous steam.

            Korra recognized it too late.

            It wasn't the first time she'd been faced with an explosion in such close proximity, but it was the first time that such a thing engulfed her on all sides, and it was the first time that her companions were out of reach. As the fumes ignited and the flames erupted, Korra threw herself to the floor of the gondola and bent the air around her body, forcing the heat and smoke upward and, she hoped, away from Opal and Asami.

            She lay beneath the flames, terrified, for what seemed a long time before the fuel was spent, and when it had gone she scrambled into the open. She wasn't sure what she would find. She hoped Opal and Asami had been far enough away to avoid the blast. She wondered how she, herself, had avoided the blast.

            Much to Korra's horror, Opal and Asami were on the ground, and for a while they didn’t move. But then, very slowly, they shifted and looked up with soot-covered faces, and they both looked every bit as scared as Korra felt.

            "Are you okay?" Asami cried, and she jumped to her feet.

            Korra didn't bother to answer. Instead she rushed forward, grabbed Asami and Opal by the wrists, and bolted toward the enormous rock wall surrounding the compound. They had gotten lucky, she knew. This place had probably been booby trapped the whole time. Whoever had abandoned it had probably set the whole place to blow, and had expected any investigators to cross into the prison by way of the gondola. There was no telling what might be triggered next.

            As they neared the wall, Korra did away with all thought of airbending them precisely. Instead, she threw Opal and Asami ahead of her, gave a great stomp of her foot, and thrust her fists skyward. A pillar of earth shot up beneath their feet, and as they flew Korra directed them to safety with her airbending.

            Another explosion set off the moment their feet touched the top of the wall. A deafening _boom_ radiated from deep within the building, and a series of smaller yet still powerful explosions followed as if by chain reaction.

            Korra wasn't going to wait around to see what happened next. She wasn’t going to stay and watch. Instead, she planted her hands firmly in the middle of Opal and Asami's backs and pushed them from the wall toward the steaming, boiling moat below, and as they fell she began to manipulate the water. By the time they reached the surface she'd drawn up a sizeable column, frozen it solid, then throttled it with all her might back down. They landed in the cool spot, and at once Korra set to work, providing the three of them a safe haven beneath the surface.

            When she looked up, the whole sky seemed to have caught fire. Flaming debris rocketed into the night, propelled by countless blasts from within the Boiling Rock, and plumes of thick black smoke obscured the stars. Pieces of scrap and metal rained down into the water. She wondered if the whole place had been set to go up.

            She didn't want to stay to find out.

            Korra pushed Opal and Asami forward until they emerged on the same shallow beach they'd entered by earlier, carved a sloppy hole through the stone, and led them through as quickly as she could. The whole while, she could hear eruptions behind them.  She could feel the blasts pulsing through the rock and shaking the earth beneath her feet.

            The moment they came through the other side of the mountain, Opal blew her sky bison whistle, and another minute later Juicy had touched back down on the beach, looking skittish. The girls loaded themselves into the basket without a word to one another, and then set off as quickly as they could northward and toward safe territory.

            It was only after they had cleared the island that Korra bothered looking back to see the enormity of the destruction. What wasn't obscured by the smoke had been obliterated completely. Only portions of the interior walls seemed to still be standing, or at least that was all that Korra could tell.

            In relative safety, they checked their wounds. Opal and Asami had managed to come out relatively unscathed with a few cuts and scrapes from the flying debris, and Korra herself had managed only a long scratch down the arm she'd used to block the initial blast. None of it was serious enough to warrant any particular worry.

            "It's a good thing we didn't use that car to get to the island," Korra said once she'd caught her breath and had gotten her nerves back around her.

            "No kidding," Asami replied. She still sounded shocked. "I can't believe we didn't notice any hookups in there. I wonder what triggered the gondola to go up."

            "That might be why it was powered down," Opal reasoned. She sounded shocked, too. "Once you turned it back on, that must have set everything into action."

            "Makes sense," Korra agreed. She looked out to the distant smoke again. "I guess all that's left to do now is get the items we grabbed to Lin so that she can brief the Firelord about what we found. Or what we didn't find, anyway."

            "Agreed," Asami said.

 

 

            The two-day trek back to Republic City passed almost entirely in silence, and they rested very little. Korra wasn't sure if everyone was simply too tired or if everyone had been too frightened by what had happened to say anything about it. But she wasn't going to press for needless conversation. She had a lot on her mind as well.

            They touched down at Air Temple Island around noon, and Tenzin met them at the stables. He looked slightly displeased, a little concerned, and overwhelmingly tired. Korra hadn’t seen him in such a state since the day of the collapse.

            "We've got news," Tenzin said as soon as they had disembarked, and from the tone of his voice, Korra knew it wasn't good. Tenzin's pause occupied only a second, but it was enough for a dozen terrible scenarios to play out in Korra's head. Primary among them was that something else had happened to Bolin. But then Tenzin took a deep breath and pressed on. "You girls can't stay here," he said. "There've been half a dozen attacks since you left, and Raiko is taking drastic measures."

            "What?" Korra blurted. Judging by the look on Asami and Opal's faces, they felt the same sense of surprise that she did. "What do you mean?"

            "I don't have much detail, but I know that the group of firebenders who attacked Ba Sing Se caused a number of explosions around the city. They claimed responsibility for it in an open letter to the press yesterday. Raiko has mandated all firebenders in the United Republic to register their names, photographs, and fingerprints to the police."

            Again, all Korra could say was, "What?"

            Tenzin sighed, exasperated. "They're creating a registry," he explained in the same tone he might've used when scolding Meelo or Rohan. "They're creating a registry for firebenders in the United Republic, so that when another attack happens they can track down whoever is responsible. The whole city is up in arms over the thing, especially the thousands of innocent people who are being targeted by the measure. I don't think it's safe for any of you to be here, not right now."

            "But--"

            "I won't hear any excuses," Tenzin said firmly. "It won't take long for you to get to Zaofu if you take Oogi." Tenzin paused and shot a conciliatory glance to Opal. "Oogi is faster and stronger, and hasn't just made a five-day trip. As soon as you're there I'll try and get you a wire with more information."

            "Why can't we get more information _now_?" asked Asami.

            "Because I don't even have it," Tenzin said. He sounded genuinely upset now. "I've barely been able to talk to Lin. She's been too busy trying to do damage control and every time I try to speak with her she brushes me off. I worry something is wrong beyond the obvious."

            Korra didn't know what to do except say, "Okay." She couldn't argue with Tenzin on the matter. She couldn’t really argue with Tenzin on _any_ matter. If what he said was true, there were likely to be riots and violence in the streets, and in such a scenario there would only be so much that even the Avatar could do to stop it. Considering her rocky relationship with Raiko, he might even target her. Best to lay low, she figured, until someone somewhere could come up with a plan of action or placate the angry citizens.

            "Here," Opal said at last, and she produced the items she'd collected from the Boiling Rock. "We found these while we were there."

            Asami gave over the books she'd taken as well.

            "The whole place blew up," Korra said by way of explanation. "We set off some kind of chain, I don't think there's anything left except what we've got here." Then, when Tenzin's face screwed up, she added hastily, "I'll send a letter to the Firelord with all the details. You've got enough to worry about here."

            "I would appreciate that," Tenzin said. "Now, I'll go get supplies to last you the trip to Zaofu. You gather what things you'll need. I want you out of here within the hour."

 


	24. Zaofu

            The awkwardness hit as soon as the doors to the airship closed, and as if by default Bolin fell back into silence. Even if he'd felt a little better that morning, any positivity he'd had seemed to have stayed with Opal on Air Temple Island. Now that he was by himself again and without the safety net his friends provided, he'd deflated under the weight of reality. Soon he'd be in Zaofu without anyone he really cared about, and his every move would be scrutinized and over evaluated.

            He passed the time staring out the window and trying to wrap his head around everything that had happened to land him in such a horrible position. A lot of things had happened, but common among them all was an alarming degree of negativity, anger, and disbelief that seemed to have begun the day of Mako's funeral. That felt like such a long time ago. He'd been able to control himself back then. He'd been able to control himself up until the point when Katara knocked his bending loose. After that, he'd crumbled.

            In all, Asami had been right. It seemed she was always right about this kind of thing. He wasn't getting better. He was getting worse and had been for a while, but he was just too stubborn to admit it. He had never considered himself to be particularly prideful, but now he knew it had been there all the same. He just wished Asami would have spoken up sooner. He wished that he'd taken the time to stop and think earlier. Maybe if he had, he'd still be at Air Temple Island. Maybe if he had, he'd be helping with the investigation of the Boiling Rock.

            That was the worst part, Bolin thought, being stuck on the sidelines while everyone else pursued leads on the people who'd attacked Ba Sing Se. Or maybe the worst part was that nobody trusted him anymore. Nobody trusted him about anything. If they didn't believe he cared enough to see his own base needs met, if they didn’t believe he cared whether he lived or died, how could they ever believe he'd be a benefit to any kind of investigation?

            He cringed.

            He'd have been a liability if he'd gone with the girls. If they were attacked while he was there he'd probably do more harm than good in the end. He'd probably collapse again and then they'd have to haul him out unconscious. He was in no condition to protect anyone. He was in no condition to bend in even a casual capacity, let alone in a potential fight with people who wanted to kill him. He hadn't been in that kind of shape in weeks, not since before the collapse, not since before he'd blown up at Lin and Su. Not since the South Pole.

            Maybe the bending block had all been in his head, just like everything else seemed to be. Maybe he never should have taken Katara up on her offer to help fix it. Maybe it would've come back on its own when his mind and body were more prepared.

            And there it was, as plain as day: He hadn't been prepared. Not for any of it. He hadn't been ready to lose Mako or deal with the fallout. He hadn't been ready to get his bending back. He hadn't been ready to take part in the investigation. But he'd tried to do it anyway and it had led him to disaster. He'd skipped too many steps on the path to recovering, and in the end he'd just fallen on his face. It was worse than that, truthfully, but Bolin couldn't think of a good enough metaphor to do it justice.

            All he knew was that he felt awful in more ways than he ever believed possible. And maybe he'd acknowledged the physical side of things because there was no shame in being injured, but he'd never admitted to the psychological problems because there _was_ shame in being _hurt_.

            He didn't know why there was shame. There shouldn't have been, but there it was all the same. He wasn't the first person to feel _bad_ in the world. He wasn't the first person to experience horrible things that set him back a little bit. But then again, he hadn't been set back _a little bit_. He'd been set back so far that what once had been a matter of _would not_ turned to a matter of _could not_. He'd been set back so far that he could no longer say what he wanted or needed to get better. He couldn't bring himself to ask for help. He'd been set back so far that he couldn't keep food down, and he couldn't figure out if _that_ was a physical problem or if it had been caused by something in his head. He couldn't even _eat_. What kind of pathetic mess did that make him?

            By the time Su found him, he'd depressed himself again, and it seemed from the moment she sat down beside him on the padded bench beneath the window that she knew it. He could tell from the look on her face, and he imagined that if he'd been paying more attention, he would've felt it, too.

            "No Pabu, huh?" She said by way of greeting. It seemed to Bolin that she was trying to sound casual.

            "He doesn't really like flying," Bolin replied flatly. "Last time I saw him he was under a chair somewhere."

            "Well," Su continued with a sigh, "how are you feeling?"

            "Fine." It was a lie and he knew it. And she probably knew it, too. He kept staring out the window, though it was beginning to get dark and he couldn't see much beyond clouds and mountains. He didn't want to look at her.

            "We'll be home shortly, and I wanted to talk to you before we set down. I think you'll appreciate it more if I give things to you straight, right?"

            Bolin shrugged. He didn't know what she'd be _giving him_ to begin with. Whether it was straight or not wouldn't likely make much difference.

            "You'll have your own room in the Beifong estate, though I wouldn't call it an apartment by any means. You'll still have to come out for meals."

            Bolin didn't miss the meaningful pause after she'd finished her thought.

            "I'm going to have you stay on rest for another couple of days," Su continued slowly, and when Bolin made to protest she shushed him before he ever opened his mouth. "No, you need to hear me out. Two days is all I'm asking, and it's not without purpose. I'll have people in to speak with you about arranging your things, and that'll take up most of your time."

            Bolin stared hard at her for a minute before repeating flatly, "Arranging my things?"

            "Yes. Maybe that wasn't the best way to put it," Su said thoughtfully. "What I mean is that I've made appointments with a few people who are going to try to help make you as comfortable as possible." She paused. The way she'd said it made it sound like he was dying. But she continued on without much in the way of reaction. "I've arranged with our chef to discuss meals, a decorator will come by to make sure your room is the way you'd like it to be, I'll have a purchaser in to see that you've got everything you want otherwise." She had begun counting on her fingers. She wasn't even looking at him anymore. "Our tailor will come in and get you measured for some new clothes."

            Bolin wasn't sure how he felt about all of this for reasons outside of the obvious. He didn't want that kind of attention. That wasn't why he'd agreed to come. Now he thought on it, he hadn't _agreed_ to come at all. This had been forced on him, good idea or not, and all he wanted was to be left to fix himself on his own. He didn't want to be pampered or coddled or _attended to_ in any way, really. He just wanted time and quiet and the space to think about what the heck was going on in his head, try to focus himself, and get back to normal.

            "I don't really think I need all that," he said at last.

            "Nonsense," Su said. There was a crispness in the word that left no room for argument. "Here's the deal, sweetheart: You give me those two days at rest--and I mean two days starting tomorrow morning, not tonight--and after that you'll have full autonomy. Okay? After those two days you can go anywhere you want and do anything you want, no questions asked."

            It was weird how Bolin kept wanting to laugh at the worst times, at the times when laughter would come off as derisive or sarcastic. But the thought of _full autonomy_ seemed ridiculous in this context. There didn't seem to be anything autonomous about what was happening here at all. He held in the laugh and stared at his shoes instead.

            "I mean that," Su said. Bolin wondered if she had read his expression, or if his face had screwed up somehow to give him away. "I know that the last thing you want is for everyone to be watching you all the time. I trust you to make the decisions that are best for you. You're the only one who knows how good or bad you feel, and if you're ready to run a marathon on the third day, then you're more than welcome to go. If you feel like you need to sleep, you can sleep. If you want to train, you can train. It's not my place to force you to do things you don't want to do. Besides, it wouldn't help you anyway."

            Bolin stared hard at Suyin. He couldn't get a read on her, and he hated it. It made him angry, and he didn't know why.

            "All I'll ask is that you stop in for your meals, whatever you and the staff decide they're going to be, and check in with me once in a while so I know you're not off rotting somewhere. Do you think that's fair?"

            He did laugh that time, and the minute it came out he felt a little guilty. Still, he remembered only a few nights ago when he lay against Opal and listened to everyone discussing him like he was completely incapable of making decisions for himself. He remembered thinking about how everything here would present the illusion of choice, and this certainly fit that bill nicely. Autonomy, sure, but only on Su's terms.

            Having no choice, he said, "I guess."

            By this time the airship had crossed over the mountain range that separated Zaofu from the rest of its province, and the city lights came into view. It was just as big as Bolin remembered it being, hundreds of buildings clumped into sections which normally were housed beneath enormous metal domes.

            But the domes weren't there. Not completely, anyhow. It seemed that they were still in the process of being rebuilt.

            "Welcome home, dear," Su said as she peeked out the window.

            Bolin sighed, staring down. "You said I could jump off the domes. How am I supposed to do that if the domes aren't there?"

            Su smiled and patted his shoulder as she stood. "I said you could jump. But I never said _when_."

            He couldn't help but narrow his eyes at the condescending look she gave him.

            "Come on. Let's find Pabu and get your things, and I'll show you to your room."

            He followed.

            The greetings when the airship touched down were as awkward as Bolin believed they'd be. Su's husband, Bataar, shook Bolin's hand cordially and welcomed him, but he was the only Beifong that bothered to show up. It was probably for the best, Bolin thought. He didn't feel up to talking anyway.

            Su took him along the stone path that led to her home. It was familiar territory: Bolin had stayed here before. He'd stayed a few times, in fact. They walked past the training grounds for metalbending, past the pillars upon which rested hunks of raw meteorite, past the courtyard where the Red Lotus had once held Korra hostage, and it still bore a few scars from that fight.

            He'd never been surprised by the luxury of Suyin's home: the Beifongs had always had money. But he was surprised at the scope of the room she opened for him. Every time he'd stayed in Zaofu before he'd been put in the same modest guest room with Mako, which was just large enough for two twin beds and some additional furniture to fit comfortably.        This room, in contrast, was enormous. Everything about it was enormous from the bed to the chest of drawers to the desk in the corner, and it was all constructed from what looked to be expensive wood with hand-carved designs. The room itself seemed as large as his whole Republic City apartment.

            At least he wouldn't be wanting for space.

            "I hope you like it," Su said, and she motioned him inside.

            Bolin wasn't sure what he was supposed to say, so he entered the room in silence and tossed his bag on the bed. Pabu jumped from his shoulder and burrowed sleepily into the comforter.

            "I'll let you get settled in," Su said. "Are you hungry?"

            He didn't look back at her when he said, "No."

            Bolin knew that she didn't like the answer, but she didn't argue. Instead, she said, "All right, then. I'm going to go get some dinner. If you change your mind, you're more than welcome to join me. I trust you remember your way around here."

            "Yeah. Thanks," Bolin said feebly, but he didn't intend to join her.

            Then Su left him by himself.

            Bolin had brought so few items with him that it took virtually no time to unpack. He situated his clothes in the chest of drawers and slid his bag neatly under the bed, then sat down heavily, kicked off his boots, and dropped back onto the blankets. He had to come up with a plan of action here. He had to figure out how to get everyone off his case and get himself back to normal.

            There was no question what he'd be doing for the first forty-eight hours: Sitting on his bed and hating his existence while all of Su's attendants fussed over him. No, he thought, and he pressed his hands against his forehead: That kind of thinking was what had gotten him in trouble in the first place. He needed to think positive, but it was so hard.

            He started over.

            Two days. Two days of rest. Sleep as much as possible, he thought. Whenever there wasn't a person trying to talk to him, he'd be trying to sleep. It was the only way he'd stay sane being cooped up. And after those two days he didn't know _what_ he'd do. Explore Zaofu, probably, since he'd never been free to roam before. Maybe he'd try to find a quiet, secluded spot where he could disappear to when Su's overbearing mother routine got to be too grating.

            It was already grating.

            Bolin couldn't help a cry of frustration: No matter what he did, he couldn't seem to shake the negativity. It had gone with him everywhere, pervaded everything he did, and had overshadowed every decision and interaction he'd had since waking up from the collapse. If his visit to the South Pole had set him on the path to ruin, the collapse had pushed him over the edge. That made him mad, too, how an event that he couldn’t even remember had perverted every aspect of his life. The building hadn't just crushed him, it'd squeezed every ounce of happiness and dignity out of him, too.

            But at least he could think now, and that was a marked improvement in the long run.

            Another sigh and Bolin pushed himself upright. He looked thoughtfully at Pabu, then stood. "Come on, Pabs, let's go."

            Pabu jumped to Bolin's shoulder, and Bolin left. There were a few hours left to kill before his rest orders would be enforced. He figured he may as well spend them standing.

            The first day of rest passed as Bolin imagined, between the awkward talks with Su and visits from all manner of strange people. The first person in his room had been Suyin's chef, an imposing-looking man who took a comical degree of pride in his work. He barraged Bolin with a battery of questions ranging from likes and dislikes to allergies and everything beyond, which Bolin endured stoically. But when the chef began presenting elaborate menus, Bolin stopped him dead with a look. Apparently Su hadn't made the situation clear, and for the first time Bolin had been forced to explain himself _for himself_ in clear terms: "I can't eat anything," he'd said, and it had taken an enormous amount of effort to force out the words. He felt so embarrassed that he couldn't even raise his eyes. He fidgeted like a scared little kid. "I can't eat unless you want me to throw it back up. I don't know why, so don't ask."

            He'd expected the chef to judge him. He'd expected the chef to be disappointed, but the explanation seemed only to bolster him. The questions shifted focus: Cooked or uncooked? Savory or sweet? Vegetables? Proteins? Textures? Bolin didn't understand most of what he was being asked, and in the end had said a bit hotly, "Look, I don't care what you give me as long as it comes in a cup."

            That had been the end of that discussion. The rest was decided without him by Su, which she explained later on: Five to six meals a day, once every three hours beginning at eight in the morning. It wasn't a leisurely schedule, Bolin thought. Left to his own devices he didn't often get up until after nine or ten, but at least it was a schedule, and maybe a routine would prove some benefit.

            A group of interior decorators arrived that afternoon, interrupting a wholly restful nap, and had arranged and rearranged the room four different ways before Bolin could find the words to argue. They asked him if he liked the furniture, if he liked the rug, if he liked the color of the drapery. When he explained that he hadn't even realized there _were_ drapes, they laughed at him, and that made him angry, too.

            In the end, very little was changed: He'd had them remove the fancy area rug that occupied the room's empty floor space and had them exchange the sheer window coverings for thick, dark fabrics that would block the sun for superior napping. They hadn't done it happily, he noted, but if he was going to spend hours upon hours sleeping here, he wanted it to be dark and quiet and cold. The last thing he'd had them do was bring a selection of pillows--he didn't care about color or style or size--and once they had delivered the items and left again, Bolin threw them on the floor in a corner for Pabu to nest in.

            Su arrived that evening and took her dinner with him, a meal made only slightly awkward by the fact that they'd had to sit on his bed together knee to knee. It was made only slightly _more_ awkward by the fact that she was eating what looked to be a specially prepared meal and he was stuck with whatever gunk had been thrown together and liquefied. It was better than whatever they'd given him on Air Temple Island, though, and that came as a nice surprise.

            The second day passed the same as the first, with all manner of people showing up at all times of the day to perform all kinds of menial tasks. A cleaner came through and picked up the laundry he'd left in a pile by the door. She left in a huff shortly after she tried to put Pabu's pillow fortress away: Pabu hadn't liked that much, and Bolin hadn't tried to stifle his laughter at her discomfort.

            Su had saved the most awkward guest for last, Bolin supposed: the tailor. He’d never enjoyed being touched by strangers and now certainly proved no exception. Su had even taken it upon herself to stay and watch, which only added to Bolin's self-conscious quiet. He suffered in silence. If there was a bright side to her being there, it was that she provided answers to questions that Bolin never would have begun to be able to answer on his own, questions about fabrics and colors and accents and stitching. By the time the man left, Bolin's head was spinning. If Su had expected the hectic schedule to raise his spirits, she'd been horribly mistaken. If anything at all, it had exhausted him beyond reckoning, making a lift in mood impossible. He just didn't have the energy.

            When Su didn't leave, Bolin stared questioningly at her. She smiled the same condescending, motherly smirk that she seemed to wear so often when in his presence and then, the grin evident in her voice, she asked, "How are you enjoying your stay so far?"

            "The domes are looking more attractive every minute," Bolin said. He knew he'd sounded tired--he _was_ tired--but he'd sounded a little downcast, too. He'd been shooting for _blank_.

            Su's smile dropped, leaving her forehead creased with worry. But even that fell away after a while, and she watched him with a look of interest. He wasn't sure how she could be interested. He was just sitting there scratching Pabu's ears.

            After a while the silent staring became uncomfortable, and Bolin felt himself bristling again. He felt his face growing hot with embarrassment. He didn't like being watched like this. It made him angry. He looked at Su without bothering to try to hide it, and she seemed to shrink. "What?" He snapped. "Why are you _staring_ at me?"

            "Because I was waiting for you to talk," Su replied cordially, if quietly.

            "What am I supposed to say?" Bolin replied, still angry and now a little incredulous. Su stopped shrinking, but she didn't meet his gaze again. "What do you want me to say? Is there a script I missed somewhere?"

            "That's not what I meant," Su said calmly. No matter how angry Bolin got, it never seemed to really ruffle her that much. He wondered how she could always stay so calm. He wondered how she could manage to keep a straight face through everything. "I meant that I was staying here in case you needed an ear, in case you'd come up with something you wanted to say. But it seems like you haven't." She stood, and the smile she put on seemed sad. It made Bolin feel guilty for lashing out at her. "My fault," Su continued, and she looked at him full in the face. The sadness had gone to her eyes, too. "I shouldn't push. I'm sorry."

            Bolin took to stammering. "Su, listen, I--"

            "It's okay, dear," she said, and now she was by the door. He just wanted to apologize before she left, but it didn't seem she was willing to give him the chance. "If you decide you want to talk, you know where to find me. And if you don't want to talk to me then there are dozens of other people around here who'd be more than happy to listen." She opened the door and sighed at it, then smiled back at him. "Good night. I'll see you tomorrow morning."

            She closed the door before he could protest, and again, Bolin hated himself for being so hot headed. All she had been doing was trying to help, everyone had been trying to help, and it seemed that the only way he repaid them all was by yelling at them and sabotaging the progress they helped him make. Heck, he sabotaged the progress he’d made on his own, too.

            Full of frustration, he threw himself back on his pillows, stared at the wall, and waited for sleep to overtake him.

            It took a precious long time for Bolin to fall asleep, and when he did it wasn't restful. He kept waking up between a series of strange, seemingly disconnected dreams, and he struggled after each to drift off again. Twice he dreamed of the lava ocean but managed to wake before anything too gruesome happened, and he wondered again exactly what it was all about. Then he dreamed of the day he'd been attacked by the combustion bender, of the explosions and the heat and the noise of the building giving way beneath him. And he didn't wake up when he fell in the dream like he normally did. Instead, the dream went black and he imagined being crushed. He could hear his body twist and crack beneath its weight, and when he finally woke, it took a few seconds before he could draw breath. His limbs had been heavy after that nightmare, and he'd had to get up and walk laps around the room for twenty minutes before he felt calm enough to lay back down.

            He'd had other dreams, too, that were less terrifying and sat more in the realm of the strange. In one, he'd been in the kitchen at Air Temple Island and had eaten twice his bodyweight in Narook's seaweed noodles. Several took place in the hospital: Once he dreamed that he'd metalbent and woke up mildly disappointed by reality. In another, he dreamed that he'd been yelling at Lin and Tenzin as they sat by his bedside, though when he woke up he couldn't remember what he'd been so upset about. All he could recall was that he'd said something about a hog monkey. In still another dream he thought he'd been sleeping beside Opal in his hospital bed, but it turned out to be Korra in the end. When he woke from that one he felt an odd warmth in his stomach, and couldn't decide if it was because he missed Opal or because every once in a while, his dreams allowed him to entertain the impossible, if just for a minute or two. After all, there was no harm in imagination.

            Bolin woke sleepy the next morning and took his time getting out of bed, but despite his grogginess he'd washed up, dressed, and made his appearance in the dining hall by Suyin's required eight o'clock. He downed his whatever-it-was without a word. He had no intention of joining her and Bataar for breakfast, but she said, "Have a seat," and he couldn't really argue.

            He just stared at her, waiting.

            "I figure you're going out for a while," Su said, "and that's completely fine. I just wanted to let you know a little bit in updates before you take off for the day. Do you have time?"

            "It's not like I've got anywhere to be," Bolin said dryly.

            "Good," Su replied, her mood undampened. "You'll have some new clothes in your room by this evening, Zhang said he had expedited the production--"

            "Zhang," Bolin interrupted dumbly. "Who?"

            "The tailor, dear. He was in your room feeling you up for an hour yesterday, I didn't imagine you'd forget so soon."

            "Oh."

            "At any rate, he's pulling out all the stops for you. I think it'd be nice if you could try things on after dinner." She paused, and Bolin nodded. What other choice did he have? When a mother said _it would be nice if you did this thing_ , it meant that you had to do the thing or she’d never let you live it down. Even without much of a mother he knew that. "Otherwise, if you decide you need somewhere to go or someone to talk to, there's our local acupuncturist and a general services physician in the area. You can ask a guard and they'll be able to give you directions. Of course, since you're a Beifong you won't have to pay..."

            "I'm a what now?"

            "A Beifong. I know you've been off your feet for a while but try to keep up."

            "But, I'm not--"

            "You may as well be. You're close enough as makes no real difference. And while you're in my house you're family anyway. At any rate, it'll be no charge for any services you request." She paused and she hummed a little bit, her eyes on the ceiling. Then she seemed to have a brainwave and looked at him again with purpose. "I figure you're going to be working on bending a little bit--or training or whatever you kids call it these days--and I have a couple of rules I'd like you to follow if it's not too much trouble. I don't care where you earthbend: You're free to work on that in the courtyard or out by the metalbending arena and I'm sure you can find a training partner somewhere. But if you're going to be lavabending I'd appreciate it if you could find a place somewhere out of the way, and once you pick a spot, keep with it. I don't need to tell you how hard it is to repair grounds that have been ruined by that sort of thing, and it can get expensive."

            Bolin just nodded. He'd intended to find a secluded spot anyway, so adhering to Su's request really wasn't any big deal.

            "Oh, and one more thing before you go," Su said as Bolin stood to leave. "The girls will be back here in about a week. That's what Tenzin told me before we left Air Temple Island. I haven't heard anything else, so I imagine they're still on schedule."

            Again, he nodded.

            "I'll let you know if anything else comes up. Otherwise, I'll see you back here for lunch."

            "Yes, ma'am."

            "Good boy. Off with you now." She shooed him from the room playfully, and Bolin didn't argue. As he left he heard her call after him, "Have fun!"

            He wasn't sure exactly how he'd have any fun. There was too much work to do.

            As Bolin wandered about outside he began to realize just how huge Zaofu was. He'd never really explored the place, had never really _seen_ it outside of the path between a few notable locations. He could get from the airfield to Su's house and to the courtyard and to the radio tower, but those few things exhausted his knowledge of the city. He'd set out with every intention of finding a quiet spot, but now he was actually looking he had no idea where to start.

            He meandered between buildings fairly aimlessly, and after a time sat down in some strange garden on a bench overlooking a pond. It seemed like a public place, he thought, a park of some kind, but even if it was a private place nobody would likely mind if he just sat there. He didn't have much choice. Even the little bit of walking he'd just done had tired him out.

            After a while, Bolin rose and set off again, more aware now of how out of shape he was. He couldn't remember the last time he'd exercised meaningfully. It would probably have been the morning Asami gifted him his shoulder brace, which, now that he thought about it, he'd never thanked her for. He'd worn the thing so often since then that he didn't even notice it anymore. It was like a second skin. He never took it off except for bathing, and even then, he'd forgotten about it once. He hadn't even removed it for Opal. And except for the time she had knocked him over, it had kept his shoulder in joint even when it had threatened to come out.

            He made a mental note to thank Asami the next time he saw her.

            Bolin walked until sometime around noon, an hour he recognized only by virtue of his stomach growling, and made his way in a straight line back to the Beifong estate. He sat for lunch and watched Bataar and Huan eat some kind of meat-filled pie with a slight sense of longing. Su entered the room just as Bolin was standing to leave, and she looked in every way harassed.

            "What's wrong?"

            Su looked for a long time at Bolin without speaking, like she was trying to think of what to say. Eventually she settled and stared at her folded hands. "Republic City was attacked," she said plainly, and Bolin sat back down immediately. Had he heard her correctly? "I just got off the phone with Lin," she continued, looking again at Bolin, "and it's bad news. I guess it happened the morning we left, but I haven't been near a radio and this is the first chance she'd had to contact us."

            "Is everyone okay?" Bolin asked. It was a dumb question. She'd already have said something if any of their friends or relations had been hurt.

            "Everyone on our end is fine," Su said. "But the city is going on lockdown. Lin said that she would leave instructions for the girls to come straight here when they return from their trip, so it looks like we'll have a full house a few days sooner than we thought."

            "What happened?"

            Su shook her head. "I didn't get much. Explosions over the course of the last three days. People have gone missing. People have been killed. Lin explained it as strikingly similar to what happened in Ba Sing Se."

            Bolin blinked.

            "I don't have any more information than that, really. Lin said she would contact me again later with more details." She accepted her lunch without acknowledging the cook, and tucked in at once. "Seems like Raiko is having a field day, though. He's requiring every firebender in the city to put their name on a list. I think it's a stupid idea, if you want to know the truth. It’s just going to make things worse. People are going to become afraid of firebenders, they're going to associate them with the attacks, and if the government starts singling them out and accusing them of crimes they've never even thought to commit, well..." She left off.

            All Bolin could do was stare at her. His knee-jerk reaction was to ask to go back home so that he could find some way to help, but he couldn't figure out how to suggest it. Su wouldn't allow it anyway, he knew. He wouldn't be any benefit to Lin or Tenzin. He wouldn't be a benefit to anyone.

            Bolin sighed and looked at the table again. He'd just get in the way.

            "Are you all right, dear?"

            He nodded and said, "Fine," but he hadn't sounded fine. Before Su could question him further, he rose and walked purposefully toward the door, his head full of thoughts.

            He had to get better. He had to get stronger. He had to figure out his bending. He had to learn control.

            Bolin walked the opposite direction as he had earlier and was pleasantly surprised to discover that the Beifong compound lay remarkably close to the outer border of the city, or at least part of it did. He found a wide green area near where the dome ordinarily would have been, which was separated from the rest of the city by what must have been one of the last natural plots of trees left. Everything about Zaofu thus far had been manicured and planned. Everything had been man-made. But this place seemed oddly overgrown.

            He liked it.

            It took a while for him to settle in. With every intention of doing meditative work, he'd sat down in the middle of the clearing and folded his legs, but then he'd just stared at the ground in front of him. He couldn't get it out of his head that Republic City had been attacked. And more, the look on Su's face had meant something beyond what she was telling him. No doubt she'd be upset about the explosions with Wing and Wei still there among it all, but she hadn't just looked _upset_. She'd looked a little bit sick.

            Now that he thought about it, Suyin hadn't looked so distressed even when he'd collapsed on her, and he'd been practically dead at that point. If no one had been hurt and no one had been killed, what could possibly have made her so upset? Certainly, she must care about Republic City, he thought, but the place had been attacked before and she'd never had such a serious reaction.

            There must have been something else.

            He shook the thought away. "Okay," he said to himself, "focus."

            It'd been such a long time since he'd engaged his mind and body so purposefully that he felt for a moment like he didn't remember how. He closed his eyes, just as Korra had taught him, and tried as hard as he could to focus on the earth. He couldn't feel a thing. The connection wasn't there like it had been at home.

            He kicked off his boots and drew his knees up to rest his feet flat on the ground. Then he laid back and covered his eyes. If he couldn't pick it up naturally, then he'd force himself to listen.

            In the days since his breakdown Bolin hadn't given much thought to the strange sensations he'd begun to feel. And since Su had placed him on house arrest he'd barely been in contact with the ground at all, especially not ground that hadn't been overworked and reshaped by human hands. He hadn't felt much. But the minute he put his bare feet down he did.

            There were dozens of faint vibrations whose rhythm could only equate to footsteps, the rumble of what must have been a car, and other more general noise that he couldn't distinguish from anything else. He imagined that if Korra or Asami or Opal had been nearby he'd have been able to feel them, too, the same way he had those few days ago.

            For the first time, he focused on himself. It took great effort, but after a time Bolin managed to pick up on his own movement, his own breathing, his own deadened vibrations coming through the ground and into the soles of his feet. It was a kind of self-awareness he'd never experienced before, and it felt wholly strange. Where he'd been able to register fear, anxiety, and nervousness in the people around him, he couldn't discern anything in himself. He was there--he could feel himself from a purely objective standpoint--but there wasn't anything beyond that. He couldn't feel anything but his own controlled breathing.

            He opened his eyes and stared up when the truth of that hit him. He couldn't feel himself, not the same way he’d felt the others. He couldn't register something that didn't exist. He couldn't feel things that weren't there. He didn't feel anything because _he didn’t feel anything_.

            Bolin wondered at what point he'd gone so numb. Everything for as long as he could remember had been dull. His emotions had been shadows of what they once were, as if his body was going through the motions but his head and heart weren't keeping up. Except when it came to being angry. He felt that keenly enough. And there had been the night he'd thrown up and fainted, the night he’d broken down completely. He recalled unbridled terror in the seconds before he’d fallen, a feeling of impending doom in which he’d been certain he was going to die.

            With a shake of his head, Bolin got back to his feet and dug his toes into the ground. Meditation over, he thought glumly. He didn't want to get caught up in too much self-reflection: It would only make him feel worse.

            On a normal day, he and Korra would have started practice, maybe with a gentle spar. But this wasn't really a normal day, and he felt a little bit self-conscious as he went about assuming the first in the long series of waterbending forms.

            It surprised him how much he remembered, but then he'd done this same routine dozens of times now and had always been quick on the uptake. He went through twice, just to be sure he remembered all the transitions, and then shook his hands out. It made no sense to practice all these forms if he never applied them, and that was the one thing he and Korra had never gotten around to doing.

            It was time to earthbend.

            Bolin felt happier than he should have when the earth responded to his command. First, he pulled one small slab from the ground, tossed it aside, then pulled another slightly larger, then tossed it aside as well. He raised and lowered pillars and squares and chunks of everything from dirt to stone, and even managed to do different things with each hand the same as he'd always been able to.

            He tempered his excitement without meaning to: Of course he remembered how to do it, he thought, he'd been earthbending his whole life. It was a little childish to be so happy about doing things he'd been able to do since he was ten.

            Eventually it came time to lavabend, and this gave Bolin pause. How could he forget what happened last time in the cell with the combustion bender? Sure, he'd been able to liquefy the stone and manipulate it, but it had taken so much effort and in the end he felt certain that the lavabending was what pushed him over the edge to fainting on Asami. Again, she'd been right: Even on a good day, even in peak physical form, lavabending took a lot out of him. It was exhausting work to be sure. On a bad day, it had nearly killed him.

            But there was no getting around it. He couldn't call himself "better" until he could do everything he could before he was attacked, with at least the same degree of skill as he once had. That was all there was to it. Even if it meant he'd faint again, he was going to push himself no matter what.

            A tiny voice in his head told him it was a stupid thing to do.

            He ignored it.

            The same as he'd done in the combustion bender's cell, Bolin widened his stance and focused intently on the ground beneath his feet. For a second he stared down, two distinct worries in the back of his mind: Would he be able to melt the rock? And was it smart to be doing so barefoot? With a sigh and a shrug, he rolled his shoulders, clapped his hands together, and drove downward. It was the only way to create lava standing still. It was the best way for him to start. No way he'd be able to propel himself upward, slam himself down, and rend the earth that way. He didn't have that much strength. He wasn't feeling that ambitious.

            He pushed. The earth resisted. He pushed harder. It resisted more.

            The lava wouldn't come.

            Frustrated, Bolin stood straight and paced. Not so long ago, this would be the point where he'd be giving himself some kind of pep talk, he knew, but he didn't feel much like encouragement. It wasn't the need to practice that was driving him so much as it was the need to prove to himself that he wasn't completely ruined. Not physically, anyway.

            He stopped pacing and looked at the ground again. Once more, he widened his stance, pulled at his pants legs, and stared down. Focus. He just had to focus. He just had to feel the earth. He just had to connect.

            Another deep breath and Bolin closed his eyes, concentrating the whole of his mind on the soles of his feet, on feeling the vibrations of the earth as he moved. With renewed and intense focus, he thrust his fingertips earthward with all the strength he could find.

            The earth opened, a small section liquefied, and a surge of true happiness shot through Bolin's middle that numbed the sudden drop in his energy.

            He wasn't _completely_ ruined.

            Another hour of opening foot-wide pools of lava and Bolin retired for dinner. Su scolded him for skipping his mid-afternoon meal, which he'd missed unintentionally, and marched him back to his room immediately upon finishing _two_ cups of whatever it was they were feeding him: He'd still not bothered to ask. In his elation at lavabending he'd completely forgotten that he'd told Su that he would try on his new clothes.

            "All right, Mr. Delinquent, there they are," Su said when she opened the door, and it seemed she was only half joking. She gesticulated at two piles folded neatly at the foot of his bed. Pabu was sleeping soundly atop one of them. "Let's go."

            "I'm not a delinquent," Bolin argued coldly. He felt too tired to temper himself, so he walked to the bed, patted Pabu on the head, and picked up the first article. "I just got distracted," he continued as he scrutinized the garment. It was exactly what he'd expect from Zaofu: A dark green, robe-like covering with metal adornments. Just from looking at it, it seemed too small. "How am I supposed to wear this?" He asked. He held it aloft for Su to see.

            "Just put it on. The measurements were right. Zhao double and triple checked them."

            With a sigh and a slight hesitation, Bolin did as he was told. He'd never liked changing in front of people, much less his girlfriend's mother. More awkward still, he'd never had to _try on_ clothes before. Mako had always overseen that sort of thing, and he'd just thrown Bolin clothes from wherever he could get them. Usually he’d erred on the side of too large, and Bolin had had to grow in to most of his things.

            He wouldn’t fit in this if he grew half an inch.

            "It looks nice," Su said as she poked at him. She tugged at the sleeves and the neck, pulled at the seams. "How does it feel?"

            "Weird." Bolin was being truthful, but he didn't know if he was more disturbed by the gown-like overcoat or the fact that Su was scrutinizing every inch of him. He wasn't sure he liked any of it, and the minute she stepped away he pulled it off and tossed it on the bed.

            "Well, that's just part of it," Su said. She plucked Pabu from the other pile and said, "Try on the rest."

            Pabu had been napping atop what comprised the lion's share of his new wardrobe, clothes that seemed entirely normal when compared to what he'd just modeled. But it took only the shirt, a high collared dark green number that was both sleeveless and entirely more form-fitting than what he was accustomed to, to make him feel uncomfortable again. When Su looked at him and said, "And the bottoms?" he felt downright embarrassed.

            "I'm not taking my pants off in front of you."

            "My loss," she said, and when Bolin glared at her she smiled wide. "Fine. I'll turn around."

            And she did.

            The ensemble felt better than the shirt alone. Everything aside from the top had just enough bag to be comfortable, and it all made sense when Su suggested that everything was supposed to be worn together, overcoat and all. An undershirt couldn't be too loose if it was to be worn beneath a robe.

            Again, she started poking at him, and Bolin couldn't help but wonder if she treated her own sons this way. But she seemed satisfied, if her smirk was to be trusted.

            "I still don't see why it's got to be so tight," Bolin complained as she walked around behind him. He could feel her eyeing him. "And you're a dirty old lady, you know that?"

            "Dirty old lady or not, I need to make sure they fit," Su replied smartly. “And they’re tight because I want to be able to see you and make sure you’re not dropping any more weight.” Bolin was genuinely surprised when she didn't poke him in the rear. "Why didn't you put these on?"

            He rounded on her, confused. In her hands she held a pair of metal vambraces.

            "Don't you like them?"

            "I don't know what they are."

            "Arms out," Su commanded, and he held out his arms. Then she clapped the metal over his wrists like a pair of manacles. She smiled the genuine smile of a proud mom. "Now you're a real member of the metal clan."

            “I can’t metalbend.”

            Su shrugged. “Lavabending is good enough, I think.”

            "Great."

            "Don't sound so excited, sweetheart. It's not like you're _living_ here or anything." She made for the door. "Best stay in the rest of the night, it's getting late, but it's up to you. We'll see you bright and early."

            All Bolin could offer in reply was a weak, fake grin. When Su had gone, he fell backward onto the bed, and Pabu came to start sniffing him and licking the metal bracers. Bolin picked him up and held him. "What do you think, Pabu? Do you like it?"

            Pabu chittered. He sounded happy, but Bolin didn't feel the same. He lowered Pabu down and the fire ferret nestled on his chest. If it would make Su happy and get her off his back, he'd wear the clothes. Except for the overcoat. That wasn't going to happen in his lifetime, especially not if he'd be lavabending. He'd probably catch it on fire.

            Bolin didn't stay in that night. After the rooms around him seemed to have gone quiet he left again, Pabu on his shoulder, and wandered back to his quiet place to lavabend some more, tired or not. He kicked off his boots and stayed there for hours, liquefying the rock, solidifying it again, liquefying it again. He felt surprisingly mobile in his new clothes, even with the tight shirt and weird metal things on his arms.

            He tried several times to pull the lava from the earth, to manipulate it the way Korra had showed him she did with water, but it didn't respond the same as the water had. It was too thick. It didn't flow as readily. But before he tired himself out completely he'd managed to pull a tendril from the ground and cast it about three feet in front of him: The closest thing to a water whip he'd been able to manage.

            Eventually he flopped onto the ground, tired, and stared up. There should've been domes there, he thought, but he didn't really mind. He could see stars. There weren’t as many as he imagined he'd be able to see in the middle of nowhere, but it was more than Republic City could offer. It was altogether relaxing, and by the time he rose to head back home he'd gone completely thoughtless, and he slept heavily and dreamlessly.

            Next day he rose earlier than required, was awkwardly complimented on his new clothes by Bataar, and spent the whole of his free time attempting to lavabend in his quiet place. He didn't think it remotely strange that he didn't see Su at all. She was probably busy being a newly elected Earth Nation governor.

            He made progress that day, and it was progress he could be proud of. Having spent hours upon hours pulling tendrils of lava from the ground and attempting to toss them, he managed to gain some distance. He could whip the lava a couple yards by the time he was through. And more, he'd had a profound realization halfway through his day: He'd need to learn entirely new ways to pull the lava from the ground. The incorporation of waterbending forms required more mobility and fluidity than normal earthbending ever allowed for. He needed to be able to liquefy the rock on the move.

            Bolin began toying with ways to transfer his energy into the earth. He tried it with his feet, with his knees, with his elbows, and he tried different motions with his hands, but none of them felt particularly useful and some of them were so weak that they hadn't produced lava at all. He stumbled on the answer by mistake in a moment of blind frustration, when he swung his arm low to scoop a rock from the ground to chuck in anger. He needed to lift the earth the same way he'd scoop sand, the same way he'd flick up a pebble. He'd need to go underhand or sidearm.

            It took hours, but in the end it worked, and by midnight Bolin was able to sweep his right hand over the ground, pulling up stone that liquefied as it moved like he was splashing water in a pool, and using the technique he'd doubled the length of his lava whip.

            He couldn't do it left-handed, though. Not yet.

            That night, Bolin went to bed feeling more smug and self-satisfied than he'd felt in weeks.

            The third day he slept in later than he’d intended and dealt with a healthy but motherly scolding from Su, who threatened to have a housekeeper wake him up at the crack of dawn if he missed another meal. He endured her admonishment quietly, his face in his cup, and then when she had finished, he said flatly, “Are you done?”

            This seemed to set Su back. He hadn’t meant it to come out so full of attitude. She didn’t say anything.

            “I’m going to go,” Bolin said. The sarcasm had gone. He felt a little ashamed now. He stood up to leave and walked to the door, but before he exited he turned back, eyes on the ground, and said, “I’m sorry to snap. I’m just tired.”

            It was the truth and he knew it. He hadn’t had the stamina to have treated the last couple of days as he had, and it seemed to have caught up with him. But when he thought on how far he’d come and how surprisingly successful he’d been at blending waterbending and lavabending, he swelled a little bit.

            He spent the rest of the morning napping with Pabu. Then he spent the early afternoon at his quiet place sitting on the ground barefoot and feeling the earth rumbling. He didn’t have to meditate to clear his mind; he just had to sit there. And it wasn’t that his mind had cleared--it hadn’t, truly--but he’d been able to focus on single thoughts that he worked through in turn. Through it all, he kept reminding himself that he wasn’t broken, and for a little while he actually believed it.

            Bolin returned that evening and spent another hour sitting. This time Pabu had come along for the walk, and Bolin watched him jumping around in the trees. It was the liveliest he’d seen Pabu in weeks, and he wondered if it was the result of his own improvement. Maybe Pabu was happy. And if Pabu could be happy, maybe Bolin could be happy, too.

            He stopped himself there, unwilling to allow his brain to contradict him. If he stayed on that optimistic train of thought for too long, he knew he’d just reason his way out of it and end up depressed again. Better to leave it alone and enjoy it while he could.

            To keep himself from thinking too much he stood and took to bending. He opened a wide pool and worked at it gently, pulling and pushing the lava into gently rolling waves. It was the same as Korra had taught him to do. She had explained it clearly: The best way to learn to control the liquid was to start small, to manipulate it in the ground, and then draw it out.

            He played with the lava for a while before cooling the ground and practicing generation. Again, he swept his fingers low, and as he pulled them along, the ground rose up, liquefied, and flew the same as it had the night prior. He practiced holding the lava aloft, which proved more difficult than he thought it would, and he nearly burned himself twice. Then he practiced whipping the lava forward, casting it over his head, pulling it behind him. This he did with relative ease, as it didn’t require him to keep the stuff stationary. It seemed easy to control if he kept it moving.

            It was well after sundown when he felt Su approaching, and he noted this with surprise. He'd not felt anybody in a few days, but there hadn't really been anyone around. And even when there were people, he'd not been so in tune with the earth. More, Su had been leaving him well enough alone since he’d come off bed rest. She hadn’t seemed to have wanted to bother him, and he imagined that she would’ve continued leaving him alone if whatever she wanted now wasn't important. She had no real business tracking him down, otherwise. He wondered what she wanted.

            Bolin dropped the lava to the ground and turned to face her as she approached. He didn’t say anything. She didn’t look quite right.

            “Hello, Bolin,” she said, and she forced a smile. He noted a stiffness about her. Through his bare feet, he felt her nerves. They were the same as the night he'd collapsed on her, except now his feet weren't on her thighs. “I thought you might be out here.”

            “What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked.

            “Oh, just that it’s a nice place,” Su said thoughtfully. She pulled a pillar of rock from the earth and sat atop it. “You don’t need to stop on my account.”

            Bolin hadn’t told anyone what he’d been doing or how he’d been practicing lavabending. As far as he understood, Korra was the only person who knew he’d been trying waterbending techniques. “It’s okay,” he said, and he cooled the rock at his feet. “I can take a break.”

            “Maybe I want to watch,” Su said happily. “I think it’s neat.”

            “It’s not supposed to be neat,” Bolin said dryly. He wasn’t sure why she’d been irritating him so much lately. She shouldn’t have been, but all the same there were little things about her, little things she did, that infuriated him. If anything, he knew he should be concerned about the look on her face. “What do you want?”

            Again, he hadn’t meant the words to come out so rudely.

            “The girls will be here tomorrow morning,” Su said, but her nerves didn’t calm. “I talked to Lin again after dinner.”

            “Oh?”

            “Yes.”

            Bolin threw his arms wide in a gesture of welcome, but his posture was altogether hostile. “Are you going to tell me what she said?”

            “She said that the girls are on their way, simple as that. They arrived at Air Temple Island before noon and set back out almost immediately. They should be here sometime tomorrow morning if they don’t stop. Oogi flies faster than an airship.”

            “Okay,” Bolin said, his dissatisfaction obvious. “What else is there?”

            “What do you mean?”

            “What else is going on?” There was no hiding his frustration now. He’d given up trying to temper it. “You’ve been all shifty around me for the last two days. What’s going on?”

            “I didn’t see you at all yesterday,” Su replied flippantly.

            “Were you avoiding me?”

            “No.”

            This shut Bolin up. He crossed his arms over his chest and stared at her curiously. She was good at lying. To any onlooker, she would’ve seemed completely at ease, but Bolin knew differently. He could feel differently. She couldn't hide it from him, and the fact that she was trying to hide it made him even more angry. “Then what?”

            “You ought to drop the attitude,” Su said. “It’s not polite.”

            “And you’ve got room to talk about being impolite.”

            “More than you do.”

            It took everything Bolin had to keep himself from blowing up. He forced himself to think of the way he’d felt after he’d blown up at Su the first time, the way he’d felt when he’d blown up at Korra on several occasions. He always felt guilty after the fact.

            He could control his bending again, now he had to control himself.

            “Look,” he said in a very measured tone, “I’m going to ask you once, and I’m going to ask you plainly… Why are you afraid of me?”

            “What?” Su exclaimed with the tiniest, most disbelieving laugh. “What are you talking about?”

            “I can feel you. You’re nervous. Why?” Bolin wasn't laughing. He didn't even smile. There was nothing funny here.

            Su leaned forward and dropped her elbows onto her knees. Bolin didn’t miss the glance she shot at his feet. “You never told me about that. What’s going on?”

            “You’re deflecting.”

            “You’re smart.”

            “Did you come out here just to bother me? Because I’ve got better things to do than try to get you to talk to me straight.”

            Su shifted uncomfortably on her seat of earth and folded her hands in her lap again. She spoke bluntly. “I wanted to talk to you about Opal.”

            It was Bolin’s turn to be surprised. “What?”

            “About Opal,” Su said again. She still felt nervous even if she didn’t look it. “Since she’ll be back tomorrow.”

            “What about Opal? Is she okay? Did something happen?”

            “No, no. Nothing happened, she’s all right. I wanted to discuss living arrangements with you.”

            Bolin said nothing, but the look on his face must have conveyed his every thought.

            “I talked with Bataar and we decided it would be a good idea for the two of you to stay together.”

            “Stay together…”

            “Yes. You can move into her room or she can move into yours. Either way is fine.”

            “That’s awfully open minded of you,” Bolin said. His anger had given way to surprise. “Why? What's in it for you?”

            “Ah, you caught me,” Su smiled. “I'll admit that my motive isn’t entirely pure. I want Opal to stay with you so she can keep an eye on you and help make sure you’re taking care of yourself.”

            Bolin bristled again. The anger mounted.

            “I think it’s for the best. So does Bataar. So did Lin.”

            That last statement only made things worse. “You talked to _Lin_ about this?”

            “I did. She cares about you just as much as I do.”

            Bolin laughed derisively.

            “I wish you’d stop that.”

            “Why? You say stupid things and I’m _going_ to laugh at you.”

            “I’m being serious.”

            “Fine,” Bolin snapped. It was getting harder and harder to hold back now. He felt wholly indignant. He felt offended. It wasn’t her place to discuss his private matters with Lin of all people. “But what have I done that’s making you think I’m not taking care of myself? What have I done that makes you think I need that kind of supervision? Haven’t I already proven that I’m not going to hurt myself?”

            Su just watched him. Bolin couldn't be sure if she was too afraid to say anything, but the tirade had started and he couldn’t stop himself.

            “What do I have to do to _please_ you people? Seriously! I’ve jumped through every hoop you’ve put in front of me and it’s still not good enough? It’s ridiculous, Su! I’m not a child! I don’t need a babysitter!”

            Bolin could feel her nervousness again, it had come back even stronger than before, but Su spoke evenly. “You’re making assumptions, dear. I don’t think you need a babysitter either. I’m not worried that you’re going to hurt yourself. Well, outside of lavabending without shoes on: That’s probably a stupid move. But you’ve been pushing yourself.”

            “ _Of course_ I’ve been pushing myself!”

            “Let me rephrase: You're pushing yourself too hard. You need to pace yourself.”

            “I spent the whole morning asleep!”

            “And you shouldn’t have had to.” Su sighed and looked at the sky. “And there's more. Right now, I know you’re upset and you’ve got every right to your feelings. But you’re being irrational, and that’s what’s worrying me. It was what I was worried about to begin with. It’s what I’ve been worried about all along. I thought two days of rest would be enough to get your feet under you, but I guess I underestimated your drive. I know you’ve been out here every second you’ve been awake. I don’t know what you’ve been doing, I can’t wager a guess at that outside of _bending_ , but you’re not resting and you're still unstable. I think that having Opal near you will be a good thing. She can be your voice of reason.”

            Again, Bolin just stared. It felt like he’d been slapped in the face. “So, you want Opal to tell me when to work and when to quit?”

            “I suppose, if that’s how you want to look at it.”

            “And the reason you’re nervous is because I’m _acting irrationally_?” Bolin couldn’t disguise his disbelief.

            “Yes.”

            “You’re lying.”

            Su’s eyes went wide. “Excuse me?”

            “Did I stutter?”

            She stayed very quiet, and again dropped her elbows onto her knees. She looked curious now, startled and curious, and all the other worry seemed to have gone. "How could you possibly know that?"

            "I don't know! But I know! I can _feel_ it. And I'm tired of everyone tiptoeing around me and lying to me!"

            "Oh, dear."

            "Stop saying that!" Bolin roared. Then he gave a cry of frustration and pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. He'd let it go again. He'd let the anger get the best of him, and he hated himself for it.

            He dropped cross-legged to the ground and kept his face in his hands. He didn't want to look at Su anymore. He didn't want to talk to her. All she was doing was making things worse. But she didn't know that, or she didn't pick up on it, because she stood and approached him cautiously, then sat herself down in front of him. They were knee to knee again, and it was just as awkward as it had been the first time.

            "Hey," she said softly, "you want to talk to me here?" She put her hand tenderly on his knee, and Bolin was filled once again with the sudden urge to hit her. "Oh, you're shaking! Are you all right?"

            "No!"

            "Bolin, will you please talk to me?" Su sounded like she was begging. She sounded the same way Opal sounded when she was pleading with him. "You haven't talked to anyone, and there's clearly something going on with you beyond what you've said. What's this _feeling_ thing you keep talking about? Your feet?"

            "Yes!"

            "Calm down," Su cooed. She thumbed at his knee tenderly. "I didn't come out here to upset you."

            "I need you to stop touching me.” He’d growled the words the same as he had that horrible night. He’d sounded scary and threatening.

            Su jerked her hand away from him. "I--I'm sorry."

            "Whenever you touch me I want to hit you. And whenever you talk to me all caring like that I want to hit you and I don't know why. I've never wanted to hit someone before. Okay, that's a lie. I've wanted to hit people before, I've wanted to hit lots of people, but never people who were trying to help me." Bolin paused and breathed deep. A cold, hard lump had grown in his throat and he couldn't swallow it down, so he just sat there staring at his calves and waiting for it to go away. "I don't know what's wrong with me, Su. I don't understand what's going on in my own head anymore. I get upset so easily. I get angry so easily and I don't know why! Nothing you've said or done since I got here was meant to make me mad, but every time I look at you I just..." He stopped again in the middle of his thought, and the lump grew. His eyes felt hot again, and he was ashamed. He'd been holding himself together so well lately. He'd managed to push it all down. But now he sounded desperate. Why was it coming back? Why wasn't Su saying anything?

            "I don't like what's happening to me," Bolin continued. "I get mad and I blow up, and then I feel so horrible about it that I don't want to talk to anyone--I don't even want to _look_ at anyone--and that makes everyone more worried and then they pry even more and that makes me even more angry and then I blow up _again_ and... I'm not _myself_ anymore! I don’t know where I went! And I've been trying to distract myself with figuring out this waterbending nonsense, but I can't seem to do it and nobody here can help me. I can't even protect myself! I can barely _bend_ and all this horrible stuff is happening everywhere. How am I supposed to help? I'm completely worthless!"

            "No, you're not."

            He couldn’t stifle the derisive laugh. "Right. And on top of all of that I've got all these weird feelings that I can't understand, and that makes me angry, too, because I know that everyone is lying to me and telling me things to make me feel better. Oh, I don't even know! Maybe they're telling me things to make _themselves_ feel better, because all anyone does around me is feel nervous and afraid, and then I blow up at them and prove them right. And now I'm blowing up at you again, and I don't even know why. Because I thought you were lying to me. How do I know that? I _don't_ , and I don't know why I think I do. I'm not a truth seer. But I can feel how scared you are. You make the ground move. It's not a lot, but it's enough that I can feel it, especially when I'm in tune and when I've been focusing really hard, and it's confusing. I can't even feel _myself_ like that. But I can feel you, and I can feel Opal, and Asami and Korra and everybody else. But I can't feel _myself_."

            He stopped talking and closed his eyes. He'd not meant to say so much, but it had all fallen out, and it felt like even more was building up. It came in waves, and when they crested he couldn't hold it in. All he knew was that Su was touching him again, she was rubbing his arm, and this time he didn't feel like hitting her at all. He just felt sad.

            "I don't know what's wrong with me," he repeated lamely, but quieted when he heard the shiver in his words.

            "You were hurt," Su said. "That's all."

            Bolin shook his head. "I'm not _hurt_ ," he said, and halfway through the thought he faltered, then whimpered, "I'm _broken_."

            He wasn't sure what he expected Su to say to that, but he'd expected her to say _something_. She was deathly silent for a long time, and Bolin couldn't bring himself to look at her. He couldn't entertain the thought. All he could do was sit there and try to hold in the tears, and he did so with more success than he thought he'd have. His face had gone all wet but he kept his voice firm.

            "I'm sorry I yelled at you," Bolin said, uncomfortable in the quiet. "I'm sorry I've been a jerk. I'm sorry I didn't thank you for the clothes and for the room and for taking care of me."

            Su sighed. She wasn't nervous anymore, like some maternal instinct had kicked in and strengthened her resolve. She was even now. She was level. "I'm so glad you're talking to me," she said after a while, and then she threw her arms around him and squeezed him so tight that it hurt his shoulder, but he didn't move. He just sat there impassively and willed himself to relax. "I asked around, and everyone I talked to said that you've been stone silent. I'm so glad you're talking to me, even if you do yell."

            He held his breath so he wouldn't sob on her shoulder.

            "Sweetie, I don't know what's going on with you either, but we can make it better if we try. These kinds of things always work out in the end."

            Bolin shook his head again. He wondered if he was making her shoulder wet.

            "It's only been a couple of weeks," Su said. "Nobody ever expected you to bounce back so quickly. Nobody expected you to be on your feet, let alone lavabending and... And waterbending? It's okay if you have some hiccups, Bolin. We expect you to have them. I'll say it again, you were hurt, and you were hurt _badly_ , but you're not _broken_ , okay?" She pulled away from him and held him firm by the shoulders, but he kept staring down. He felt stupid. "Look at me. You're not broken, do you understand? _You're not broken_."

            "I understand you," he replied, "but I don't believe you."

            He expected Su to argue or scold him, but she didn't. "Can you explain to me what's going on with your feet?"

            The question had rather blindsided him. It was so scientific, so objective. "I don't know how to explain it. I should've said something earlier, but... I guess I didn't notice it. I didn't think it was important." Bolin paused and wiped at his eyes with the backs of his hands. The metal bracers scraped his nose. He'd forgotten they were even there, but when he remembered it made him feel worse. Here Su had invited him into her family and he'd exploded on her.

            "When does it happen? How?"

            "Well... It's embarrassing. Korra and I--well--she... I..." Another enormous sigh. He wiped at his face again and sniffled. "I asked her to teach me how to waterbend. I said that but I didn't explain. I kept having these nightmares about lavabending, I _still_ have them, and they're awful. I can't control my bending and it hurts people. I got scared and wanted to learn how to control it better so I asked Korra to teach me how to waterbend, so that I could try and... Oh, it's so stupid. It was a stupid idea. I _must_ be brain damaged."

            Su shushed him and rubbed his arms.

            "She and I started meditating every morning. Every single morning I was on Air Temple Island that I could get out of the bed, we were at the pavilion. And we stayed there for _hours_ , even when I fell asleep and couldn't think straight. And I tried really hard to get it right, and then it just clicked. Something clicked. I kept trying to listen to what the earth was telling me, and one second it wasn't saying anything at all and the next second it was telling me too much. When I tune in to it, it's too much. I can feel everything, and I don't know how to filter it out and it makes me upset. I can feel people moving around when they're nearby. It's how I knew--" he faltered again and swallowed hard. He wouldn't cry. He couldn't cry now. Su could help him if he explained himself. And if she couldn't, she'd find someone who could. "It's how I knew Asami and Korra were with me when I fainted that day with the combustion bender. And it's how I knew they were afraid, and it's how I knew Korra was angry. It's how I knew Opal had showed up, and how I knew that no matter what kind of straight face you kept that night when you sat with me, you were terrified. It's how I know you're afraid right now and how I know you've been nervous around me. And I just want people to be honest with me, because I know they're upset, but nobody will admit to it. They lie straight to my face!"

            "Oh, dear."

            "Stop saying that!"

            He did sob this time. He hated that phrase so much.

            "Even with your shoes on?" Su asked gently. "You can feel it even with your shoes on?"

            "Sometimes."

            "Wow. And when you think someone is lying to you, why do you think that?"

            "Because they get nervous. Their..." he stopped to think of the word, and flailed lamely for a minute. "I guess the vibrations change. I don't know how, and I don't know how to explain it. It's like they tense up, even if it's just a little bit, and I can feel the change in the earth."

            "Oh."

            Bolin looked at Su dead straight, tears or no tears. "You _were_ lying to me, weren't you?" he asked. "A while ago? You were lying."

            Su nodded. "I was."

            At the admission, Bolin dropped his head weakly back into his hands. "I don't even know what's happening any more. I just want it to stop."

            "Oh, no, don't wish for that." Su sounded happy, but Bolin didn't look to see. "You've got something special, and you should hang on to it. You might not be a truth seer, but you've got something special. Maybe it's the same kind of something that lets you lavabend. You never know."

            "I doubt it."

            "Quit being so negative," Su snapped, and Bolin did look at her that time. The tone of her voice had startled him into looking up. Her brow had furrowed. She looked so parental. "I mean it, now. You're never going to feel better about yourself if you keep beating yourself up." Her expression softened. "Now, what's this about waterbending?"

            "I was trying to learn. I mean," Bolin paused, stammering. "I know I can't _waterbend_ because, you know, I'm not the Avatar. But I figured if Korra taught me some of the forms I could try to adapt them to lavabending."

            "That's brilliant," Su said brightly. "And how is it going?"

            Bolin shrugged. "I can water whip. Or lava whip or whatever you want to call it."

            "Will you show me?"

            Bolin's face screwed up. "What?"

            "Show me. I want to see it."

            She didn't give him the chance to object. She stood and grabbed him by the left wrist, then tugged him as forcefully as she dared to his feet and gesticulated at the ground. She looked expectant.

            "I... I don't know..."

            "See, you're being bashful now. I want to see it and I won’t take no for an answer."

            Bolin stared at her for a few more seconds before he looked at the ground and mumbled, "Are you sure you're not going to call me stupid for lavabending barefoot?"

            "I never called you stupid, sweetheart. And I'll never call you stupid because you're not. Now, show me what you've got."

            Sheepishly, he walked her through the whole thing. He described every step of the process, from scooping the rock from the earth and melting it as it came forth to the synchronous flicks of his wrists that set the liquid to motion. And then he performed the action, whipped the lava twenty feet forward, and when he stood straight again he jammed his hands into his pockets and blushed at the ground.

            "And that's it," he said. Then he added a lackluster, “Ta da.”

            "That's incredible," Su said. She sounded somehow breathless. She sounded impressed. Bolin hadn't ever heard such a tone from her. She'd sounded absolutely flabbergasted. "And how long did it take you to figure that out?"

            "Couple days when I really set to it," Bolin replied. He sniffled, kept his eyes on the ground, and toed at the dirt.

            "Incredible."

            "You don't have to flatter me."

            "It's not flattery when it's honest. Can't you tell?"

            Bolin could tell. There was nothing insincere about her, there were no vibrations that indicated she was anything other than purely pleased.

            "You ever tried icing?"

            "Icing? Like, cake? Because you know I can’t eat."

            "I don't know what it's called!" Su cried excitedly. "I'm an earthbender, you know, and I'm not half talented enough to know the names of these things. You know that thing waterbenders do, where they throw water at people and freeze it halfway there? You know that?"

            "Yeah."

            "Have you ever tried it?"

            Bolin thought on the matter and decidedly said, "No."

            "Oh, try it! You can try it, can't you?"

            With as excited as Suyin was, Bolin couldn't say no.

            For a while the two stayed in the copse while Bolin attempted every waterbending move Su could contrive. He failed at most of them, but on the twelfth try managed to solidify the lava he'd whipped while it was still in the air, and a dozen shards of sharp obsidian rock lodged themselves in a tree across the way, setting the bark to smoldering and startling Pabu so badly he’d fallen off his branch. At that, Su had given a whoop of excitement, but Bolin had just stared at it, dumbfounded by his success. He never would have thought to throw the earth that way.

            Eventually, Bolin exhausted himself. The transition from energetic bending to nearly incapable of walking happened alarmingly fast. Still excited, Su collected Pabu, wrapped Bolin's arm around her shoulder, and half-carried, half-walked him back to his room in a moment he wouldn't remember next day. All he would remember was that her excited babbling sounded more like something he’d hear out of Ikki than out of a grown woman. She sat him on the bed, and he lay down with Pabu curled at his stomach. He was asleep before she'd closed the door, all her lies forgotten in the moment.


	25. Betrayal

            Mako was surprised by how well everything seemed to have gone. After his meeting with Beifong, he and Yaozhu had high-tailed it back to their Society-owned inn and met back up with Jing and Fa who, outside of some wounded pride and a bit of anger, ended up completely okay. When they inquired as to where Mako and Yaozhu had been, Mako remained quiet. When they pressed the matter, he pulled rank.

            Their remaining time in Republic City was spent assisting with the attacks that had been planned. Mako made certain that they were nearby for those that were within a reasonable distance, and while Jing and Fa and Yaozhu assisted in taking hostages as they had been ordered, Mako helped the wounded and set unattended captives free.

            It had been hard work to do it so stealthily, but somehow he managed.

            Though Mako was exhausted by the time he boarded the ship, he still did what he was ordered to do as far as managing captives: There would be no sense blowing his cover now. He'd been charged with restraints, and so he went slowly down six long lines of sad-looking people and shackled them to their benches, and when they begged him to free them, he didn’t say a word. Then he retired to his bunk with a bad taste in his mouth. He didn't like what he'd been doing, but he'd also had no choice. If there was any consolation, it was that he'd helped at least three dozen people escape captivity, but now that he was surrounded by hostiles again he couldn't act so daring.

            When the ship set off, Mako felt he could rest easy. Beifong had clearly understood his message, as they left port without a single hiccup. There were no boardings by customs officials, and the only trade inspection they'd had to endure was the standard protocol for every ship that made berth or departed from the south dock. It was a rudimentary procedure, something done for show more than for purpose, and they'd squeaked through without difficulty.

            Mako didn't come out of the bunk until well after they'd hit open water, and even then he did so only for two meals. Two meals was all he could stomach in the filthy galley and with everything else on his mind. Otherwise he passed the time lying on his bed, staring at the low ceiling, and thinking of his next course of action.

            The first thing he would have to do would be to report on the success--or potential success--of his rendezvous with the Triad boss. He sorely hoped that their scuffle upon exiting hadn't soured the deal, but knew that if the Triads functioned as they always had, the deal would be fine. If anything, the fight would've proven the society to be a substantial force, especially considering that four men had taken on twelve or more without sustaining damage. And really, it had been two on twelve: Jing and Fa had turned tail and run at the first opportunity, but their retreat had been on Mako's orders so he couldn't be too upset.

            After he'd briefed someone about his mission, he'd probably have to endure some questions about his quad's role in the attacks, and he knew that it would be tricky since he hadn't really been present, at least not in the capacity he’d been ordered. So, Mako spoke to Yaozhu for a while over dinner, inquiring casually about what he, Jing, and Fa had done during the attacks. And when Yaozhu asked where Mako had been during the operations, Mako lied and told him that captains had been assigned special duties at the attack sites which were, unfortunately, top secret.

            Yaozhu had been excited by the prospect of _top secret_.

            Otherwise, Mako didn't see much of his quad during the trip home. They appeared each night to sleep and ventured out early for their breakfast, and Jing had only spent the first six hours seasick. That didn't stop him from mingling with the other three, according to Yaozhu, as he'd spent much of his time puking over the railing into the sea.

            The ship docked on the beach north of Fire Fountain City sometime around noon, and again Mako went through the motions of herding their captives out of the boat and onto the beach. The process went the same way as it had when he'd been transported weeks ago: The people in good enough shape were bound at the wrists and marched in a file toward the enormous square where the fire-belching statue stood, and those who had been severely wounded or seemed infirm were separated and piled back onto the ship.

            Mako imagined they'd be going to quarantine, just as he had done.

            He parted ways with Jing, Fa, and Yaozhu as soon as the captives set off, and he walked with the other eleven captains back to their dormitory where they were greeted with cheers and whoops and general celebration. When Bingwei spotted him, he slapped Mako on the back so hard it was difficult to breathe for a few minutes. He retired to his apartment, then showered, changed his clothes, and lay down on the bed for a more restful sleep than he'd had in the last week.

            When Bingwei woke him again, the sun had started to dip low. He explained that an enormous dinner had been prepared and laid out for their homecoming, and upon arriving in the mess hall, Mako sat quiet between Bingwei and some other captain or commander listening to the lot of them talk propaganda. Halfway through the meal, Guan made another appearance at the head of the room and briefed them all on the success of their most recent mission to Republic City. In sum, the society had recruited twenty-nine able-bodied firebenders, twelve earthbenders, nine waterbenders, and sixteen non-benders, numbers that startled Mako perhaps more than they should have. Beifong had known the attacks were coming. He'd instructed her to evacuate the areas. He'd hoped she would've done a better job.

            But when he thought about it, Mako realized that the damage could've been so much worse, and the people who had been caught were likely those who disobeyed the evacuation order out of disbelief or who just didn't care enough to follow it. That didn't make them deserving of captivity, but it made Mako feel a little better.

            Another round of cactus juice capped the meal, and Mako dumped it under the table while everyone else drank. He wanted to remember his evening this time.

            He watched the celebration devolve with as much interest as horror, knowing that at one point he'd been a part of it. The men around him kept drinking, Bingwei included, and then someone brought out the girls, who stood in long double-file lines between the tables looking mostly horrified. Some people made their decisions quickly, others deliberated more carefully, and Mako overheard Bingwei's debate with another young commander as to whether he'd rather have the _stacked earthbender girl_ or _that scrawny one over there_.

            Mako ducked out before Bingwei made his decision.

            Knowing he couldn't return to his apartment, Mako walked. The night was on the uncomfortable side of cold, and the closer he got to the beach the more frigid the salt air seemed to become. Eventually he found himself a suitable spot to sit, somewhere northwest of the dormitories, on a rough stone jetty without a single boat in sight.

            Mako dropped his chin on his hand, stared out at the water, and waited. Eventually enough time would pass for the debauchery to die down, and then he'd be able to return to his apartment to sleep in some semblance of peace. But it would be a while.

            He tried to distract himself playing with fire, warming himself, staring up and trying to figure out which stars were the ones he'd been staring at while he was on the boat. He couldn't see nearly as many now, but the ones that were out shined bright and sparkled. He tried to count them, but couldn't keep himself focused. He couldn't stop thinking.

            Beifong said that the girls had gone to the Boiling Rock. They had gone to investigate and see whatever they could. Mako imagined that they'd have been surprised by the population housed on the tiny island, and he hoped beyond hope that they had been smart enough to stay away. He hoped that they would contact Firelord Izumi, and that the full force of the Fire Nation army would come down hard. He doubted they would. Izumi had always been notorious for her unwillingness to engage her army.

            Mostly, he hoped that they were okay. The news about Bolin had been difficult enough to bear--it was still difficult to think of--but when he entertained the possibility that Asami and Korra and even Opal could very well be dead, it set an even larger pit in his stomach. He was the one who’d sent them.

            He took the fact that he'd not heard anything about the Boiling Rock on this end as a good sign. He had to take it as a good sign, otherwise he'd go crazy with worry.

            Then, unbidden, his mind went fully to Bolin, and he sighed and scraped at the rocks with his fingers. He'd wanted so badly to visit the grave and say he was sorry for not being there when Bolin needed him. But there was no way. Mako would never make it to Zaofu. He'd already resolved himself to staying with the society until he could free the rest of his quad and Toru, and beyond that, the idea that he might be redeployed to Zaofu seemed a pipe dream. It was entirely likely that he'd be redeployed _somewhere_ , considering the success of his last mission, but Mako couldn't think of a single firebender who was presently housed in the Metal City. It was a bunch of earthbenders and metalbenders, and there would be no use attacking it because the society wouldn't benefit in any way. They already had enough captive earthbenders to have created the network of tunnels beneath this island, and they had increased that number with their most recent trip: How could they ever want more?

            He wondered how the funeral had gone, or if they had even held one. When he closed his eyes he imagined what he thought a funeral might look like, things he'd seen in pictures in books. He'd never been to a real funeral before. His parents hadn't had one; there had been no one to make the arrangements because no one knew they had died, and even if they’d had the chance to make arrangements, Mako and Bolin had been too young to know what to do. He never knew what happened to their bodies. But he imagined all the same: Bolin would be laying there in some kind of box all pale-faced and corpselike in whatever decent clothes he'd had available--not much if Mako knew his brother--and a few dozen people would be sitting there crying. And Pabu. Pabu would've been there, too, probably lying on Bolin like he always did.

            But then Mako remembered: Bolin had been crushed, and the image in his head shifted accordingly. And then he remembered that Bolin had been attacked by combustion benders, and the image shifted again. By the time Mako had gone through all the possible combinations of injury and disfiguration he wondered exactly what mangled hunk of flesh would've been left to bury. There had to have been _something_ , or else Su wouldn't have taken him to Zaofu.

            Mako sniffled, and then he stood to make his way back home. He'd much rather try and sleep in his own warm bed with Bingwei and a strange woman wrestling next to him than keep imagining his dead little brother.

            What a choice.

            Bingwei had picked the _stacked earthbender girl_ , but to Mako's relief they appeared to have tired themselves out by the time he'd entered the room. They were asleep and didn't even twitch when he fell awkwardly and noisily over one of the chairs, which Mako assumed had been moved as a part of their frivolity. Now sore and still slightly sad, he changed his clothes and bedded down with his pillow over his face.

            He dreamed about home.

            Mako woke early the next morning, uncertain what he was to do now that he was back home. He assumed that things would go much the same as they had before he left: Training in the yard, lunch with the quad, training in the yard, dinner with the captains, evening off duty, and sleep. But they'd had a truly successful deployment from anyone's standpoint, even Mako's own, and he'd been wondering if that would afford him some kind of leisure.

            He left the room quietly this time, taking great care not to fall over the chair again: Bingwei and his lady friend, while still sleeping, looked significantly less sedated now. He showered and changed and made his way downstairs, hoping to snag some kind of breakfast before he went out.

            He was in the midst of eating this breakfast when a courier dropped a letter on the table in front of him. Before Mako could protest or question this, the courier had moved on, dropping envelopes before several others before promptly exiting the room.

            Mako recognized the writing this time, and he wasn't surprised. He'd had a meeting with Guan before he left, why wouldn't he have one upon returning? This time he wasn't as nervous when he unfolded the paper.

 _Quad leader four zero five is summoned for a meeting with His Excellency, Guan, at two o'clock this afternoon. An escort will be waiting at one forty-five in the dormitory foyer_.

            Descriptive, as always, Mako thought dryly. But he didn't need much description, he knew exactly what was going to happen: The escort, whoever it was, would lead him back into the enormous tunnel complex, wind him around for a little while, then drop him at some undisclosed location for his meeting where Mako would no doubt be asked to brief Guan and his council as to the success of their deployment. The only unknowns were whether this would be another dining experience--at two o'clock it'd be well past lunch time--and how Mako would represent his time in Republic City.

            He met the quad at their appointed spot at their appointed time, and was relieved that they had operated under the same assumptions as he had. In all, it seemed they had recovered from their busy few days, but Jing and Fa looked somehow tired, maybe a little distracted. Yaozhu, in contrast, seemed unusually perky. And each of their expressions grew more intense, for better or for worse, when Mako explained that he'd been summoned again that afternoon.

            As they worked through the morning, Mako found himself surprised by exactly how things had changed since his arrival. He'd not really considered it before, but everything he did had become as second nature now. He didn't have to think before issuing an order, and he didn't have to think before he responded to questions. And his quad seemed the same way. They had come to accept his unorthodox methods of command as normal. As he understood it, he was the only captain who allowed his subordinates to question his decisions forthrightly, and he was the only captain who considered those questions carefully when the time came to choose.

            Mako had never thought that particularly strange. He'd always been able to question Beifong, and she was a fantastic chief of police; why shouldn't he operate the same way? Besides, Mako could think of no drawbacks to such a relationship. His quad had grown to be one of the strongest on the island, as far as he'd seen. They worked together fluidly. They developed a stronger, more fraternal relationship. Mako was their captain, of course, and Yaozhu never let him forget that, but in their eyes he was on the same level as they were. He got to make the final decisions in the end, but they knew he'd always take their concerns into account even when some of the concerns were, quite frankly, stupid.

            And he'd gotten stronger as a result of his time there, too, Mako knew. He'd not had much occasion to look at himself--there weren't many mirrors on the island--but when he did encounter one he couldn't help but stare a little disbelievingly at what stared back. He'd never been out of shape simply as a matter of lifestyle; but then he'd never been so _in shape_ either. He'd always been small framed, at least when he compared himself to Bolin (as his was the only other body Mako had ever really _looked at_ ), but the addition of a hefty amount of muscle mass filled him out nicely. At least he thought it did.

            He wondered what Korra would have to say. And that set a cold feeling in his chest.

            Two o'clock came quick, and the roiling in Mako's stomach made him thankful he took an early lunch. The nervousness sprang up just as he was leaving his apartment, when the reality of the matter hit him. But by the time he said, "Hello," to the escort he'd reasoned the worry away. He had no cause to be afraid. He'd met with Guan before in relative privacy and had done a good enough job there. And nobody knew that he'd taken a couple of detours while he was in Republic City, nobody except Yaozhu anyway, and the kid's blind loyalty was far too strong to have wavered now. The other two had never figured out where he and Yaozhu had disappeared off to that night. As long as Mako kept his head about him, he'd be fine. As long as he didn't act nervous, everything would work out.

            The walk took a long time, and Mako felt certain he'd seen some of the tunnels before. But then, all the tunnels looked the same, and they passed through a couple of wide, roughly-hewn rooms that looked to be for additional storage. They passed some new corridor entries from which Mako could hear all kinds of noises from earth smashing to people yelling. His first instinct was to go investigate these places, but every time he’d set his mind to looking around, it seemed he never got the chance.

            There was no food this time. There was little in the way of luxury at all. The rickety table at which Guan sat was small and rectangular and completely bare. An empty chair sat opposite. There was no council.

            Guan stood and gestured toward the empty seat. "Please," he said kindly, and Mako sat. Then he turned to the escort and said tersely, "This will be quick, wait downstairs," and the escort left.  Then he set his eyes on Mako. "Well, what have you got to tell me?"

            Mako tensed. All pretense of kindness had gone out of Guan once the escort left the room, and he now stood there with one hand on the back of his chair, staring hard. Mako wondered it if was a matter of intimidation again. Maybe Guan hadn't liked their last conversation, when Mako had been perhaps a little too flippant on the matter of militaristic authority.

            "I spoke with a man who called himself Shirshu. He claimed to represent the Triads," Mako said. He tried to make himself sound as official as possible, like he was giving a police report to Beifong. "The conversation went well, but getting him on board required some negotiation."

            "What kind of negotiation?"

            "Nothing outrageous," Mako explained at once. "Nothing we wouldn't have done anyway, at least I assumed as much. I told him that in exchange for their cooperation, we'll warn them about any incoming attacks so they can get their men out before any of them are caught up in it. I also told them that we'd stay off their turf."

            "Reasonable," Guan said. He turned around then and walked away, his hands clasped behind his back. He was staring at the ceiling. "Anything else you'd like to tell me?"

            "Shirshu gave me a message for you. He said that he'd like a wire from you to confirm that the plan is a go. I told him that wouldn't be a problem, since we'll need an open line of communication anyway." Mako paused, thinking. Slowly, he continued. "You should also know that there was a fight when we left. Negotiations had finished, and Shirshu sent a few men at me. I took them out, got my quad, and we left."

            "Easy as that?"

            "No, not really," Mako replied honestly. "I said there was a fight. There were a lot of thugs in that place looking to get a piece of us. Yaozhu and I held them off so that Jing and Fa could escape."

            "And where did you go afterward?"

            "Back to our rooms, sir. Yaozhu and I were separated from the other two, but we met back at our rooms as soon as we could."

            Guan nodded. "Anything else?"

            Mako floundered for a moment, glad that Guan wasn't watching him. "Well, my quad and I were present for two of the attacks on Republic City. We assisted as we could."

            "And how did you assist?"

"I took captives, sir."

            "How many?"

            "I managed three firebenders and a non-bender. Two at each site." Mako was surprised by how easily the lie came. He just hoped that no one had done some kind of official report on the matter. He wasn't sure how they could've.

            "And your men?"

            "I'm not sure, sir. My men handle themselves. I set them a job and they do it, no questions asked. You'd have to ask them what they did.” Guan turned back around then, a strange smile on his face. He looked pleased, of course, but there was something else there. His expression was dulled by what might have been disappointment, but Mako couldn't know for sure.

            "It seems you've made good on your side of our deal," Guan said. "And thus I should make good on mine. I'll have Toru delivered to your apartment this evening and she'll be free to come and go as you see fit. My only requirement is that she continue sleeping in the waterbender housing unit with the other healers, in case she's needed."

            Mako wanted to argue that that hadn't been a part of the deal, but he kept his mouth shut. "Yes, sir," he said, and then added hastily, "Thank you, sir."

            "Your quad will likely be deployed again very soon," Guan said. It startled Mako a little bit. He thought the conversation had ended. "I've got a few scouts in Fire Nation territory looking for connections. If they find one, you'll be the group I send to get them on board."

            "Nothing else in Republic City?" Mako asked before he could stop himself. "It's a big place, there must be more..."

            "No," Guan interrupted, stern. "No more in Republic City. It seems President Raiko has taken care of that for me."

            "Excuse me, sir?"

            "He's rallied the firebenders of Republic City against him, against the police, and against the population in general. I heard it from three separate sources and the _Republic City Press_ that was delivered to me this morning."

            "How?"

            Guan shrugged. "He's begun profiling them. He's put it in the public's head that firebenders are the enemy; that firebenders are the root cause of all the violence that's happened in the city lately. He's not wrong, mind you. With the firebenders required to register with the police, the public began to see them as frightening and has already started alienating them, and the firebenders have begun organizing. They've begun rioting." Guan paused and his smile turned genuine. It widened. "They're doing my job for me, and I couldn't be more pleased. If my goal is for all firebenders to be autonomous and superior, we're certainly well on the way."

            Mako didn't know what to say.

            "You're dismissed, Captain. I'll send a courier with details of your next deployment as soon as they come available. Otherwise, keep up the good work."

            "Yes, sir," Mako said. "Thank you, sir."

            Then Mako left.

            The escort met him at the bottom of the same staircase they'd ascended to get into this building, and Mako spent the walk back to his apartment with his eyes on the ground, thinking. On one hand, he was glad that things had gone over well. But on the other, he wanted to go back to Republic City.

            Mako met again with his quad just before dinnertime to brief them on his meeting. Yaozhu brimmed with pride, but Jing and Fa continued looking a little downcast, and Mako couldn't help but wonder if they were jealous that Yaozhu had become the second in command of their unit, at least unofficially. Or maybe they were just tired of the kid's unyielding optimism.

            After the short meeting, Mako retired back to the captain's dormitory, took his dinner alone, and occupied the time thereafter sitting idly on one of the couches in his apartment, staring out the window and waiting.

            He nearly fell off the lounge when Toru knocked on his door, and he scrambled to open it. In the seconds between touching the doorknob and greeting her, he wondered why he was so uptight about it, but all that went away the minute he saw her, when she threw herself at him with abandon, as though they hadn't seen each other in years.

            She cried for a little while, explaining the tears as relief and happiness and all manner of positive feelings, and once she had calmed herself they left the apartment to walk about the island as they had done most nights before Mako was deployed. They didn't say much as they strolled, and Mako didn't know where they were going until he'd led her to the same rock jetty that he'd occupied the night prior, and they sat beside each other on the ground.

            "I'm glad you're back," said Toru after a while. "Things went well?"

            Mako nodded and dropped his chin on his hand. "Well enough. They're going to deploy me again sometime soon."

            "Oh." She sounded downcast that time. "Were you able to take care of what you needed in the city?"

            "Yeah," Mako replied. "Well, mostly. I got the Triads on our side like I was ordered, so that covers my rear with the chain of command. And I was able to go talk to the Chief, too. I warned her about the attacks. I tried to get her to evacuate, but I'm not sure how well it went. I'd have to imagine she did _something_."

            "I'm sure she did. I overheard the numbers, and they seemed low for a Republic City raid."

            "Well, that's good, then."

            "If you got that done, what did you miss?"

            He missed a lot, to be sure, but he knew Toru didn't mean it that way. He'd wanted to do so much while he was there: Visit Air Temple Island, talk to Korra about everything that had happened, have dinner with Asami. But mostly, he missed Bolin. "I didn't get to visit my brother," Mako said truthfully. He didn't bother trying to hide how sad he was about it. He might've, had it been anyone else sitting beside him, but Toru had seen him at his worst, at least when it came to Bolin.

            "Why not?"

            "He..." Mako faltered, then looked at the ground. He didn't know how to explain in a way that would make sense. Toru didn't know about Zaofu or Su or Opal or anything. So he settled on a half-truth and said, "His mother-in-law took him back to her home town to bury him since we don't really have family in the city."

            "I didn't know he was married, you never told me that."

            Mako shrugged. He didn't feel like going into semantics. Bolin and Opal had been together for years, for longer than any of Mako's relationships had hoped to be, and they'd been solid enough as a couple that Mako couldn't imagine them cutting things off. If she could forgive him for working with Kuvira and he could forgive her for holding such a ridiculous grudge about it, Mako imagined there was nothing that could tear them apart. They may as well have been married, as close as they were, and if Bolin's prideful bragging about their romantic life had been any indication, they would probably have had kids in a year.

            But that wouldn't happen now.

            Mako wondered for a while how Opal had taken the news.

            "How did you get to see Chief Beifong?" Toru asked when the silence grew heavy. It seemed she was trying to change the subject, or at least to get Mako's mind off of Bolin. "I mean, you were busy on society business, weren't you?"

            Mako shrugged. "We made a detour," he said. "Yaozhu and I, I mean. We visited with the Triad bosses, and on our way out they attacked us," he paused and looked at the horrified expression on Toru's face, and he guessed at her question easily enough. "No, nobody was hurt. Well, none of us anyway. Yaozhu did a number on their building." He shook his head and looked back at the ground. "Well, we split. I told Jing and Fa to head back to our rally point and Yaozhu and I stayed to fend off the Triads. And then I figured that we should go see Beifong while we had the chance. We hopped a cab and headed straight for headquarters."

            "It sounds scary," Toru said.

"No, not scary," Mako replied thoughtfully. "There wasn't anything scary about it." He paused. That was a lie. He'd been mortified when the Triads attacked, and he'd worried about visiting Beifong, too. "Yaozhu gave us some cover and I snuck into the building without a hitch. Told Beifong everything I could in the short time I had, and then we bailed."

            "What did you tell her?"

            "I don't know," Mako said. "I explained to her what had happened, where I had been since I was taken from Ba Sing Se. Or at least I told her most of it, there was no way to get the whole story out there. And I told her about the attacks that had been planned so that she could evacuate, but I already mentioned that. She met Yaozhu and looked horrified to have a combustion bender so close to her. Then she told me that Bolin had been taken to Zaofu and that the rest of the people I care about were safe. That's really all. And there wasn't a lot of talking on her part, it was mostly me."

            "They don't have combustion benders in the city?"

            "None that are welcome. At least none that I know of."

            "I'm happy that things went well for you," Toru said.

            The silence came back for a while, and the two of them stared out at the dark. Mako could see the reflections of the stars in the still water. There were no ships.

            Then he remembered.

"In a few days there's going to be a raid on the island," Mako said pointedly, his voice gone all serious, and he turned to face Toru directly. "On _this_ island. I need you to be ready to go at a moment's notice, okay?"

            "What do you mean?"

            "I told Beifong that she needed to storm the city. I told her that she needs to get a group together to come take down the society and release the prisoners."

            "When is she going to do that?"

            "See, that's the problem," Mako said with a sigh. "I don't know. All I know is that I gave her the message, and if I know Beifong, she'll be on the ball about it. She doesn't mess around when it comes to things like this." He paused again, looked at the ground, and then looked at Toru. "You have to be ready to go," he said seriously. "I mean it. You're coming with me."

            "What?"

            "When Beifong shows up and takes me home, you're coming with."

            It looked to Mako like she wanted to cry again, but her eyes remained dry. Not surprising, considering that she'd cried most of the night away. She'd probably dried up.

            "Come on," Mako said, and he got to his feet. "We ought to head back. I've got to be up early for quad and you've got to report back to your room."

            "I know."

            Toru stood, and they set off again. They stayed silent until they reached the dormitory, and Toru paused in the foyer.

            "My room is in a different building," she said. "Looks like we'll part ways here."

            Mako felt a little crestfallen. He expected that she had been staying in the same building as he was, the same as Guan was, but when he thought on the matter he supposed it made sense. She was a waterbender, a captive healer, and it was probably expected that she'd stay with the others. And to maintain the apparent illusion of distance, Guan probably had arranged the separation intentionally.

            Before Mako could utter a good night, she kissed him, and then she left.

 

            He didn't see her the next day.  He didn't really see anyone, which wasn't troubling until he went to the yard for training. Only Yaozhu showed up, looking just as happy as he ever did.

            "Where are the other two?" Mako asked shortly. He felt uneasy, and he didn't know exactly why. Things were just too quiet. Something felt off. "They know we're scheduled today, don't they?"

            "They were sick," Yaozhu said. "I think they had some bad dumplings. I didn't eat them, but they did and they both left after dinner last night and didn't come back till late."

            "Oh."

            "They were gone again this morning when I woke up. Must've been something bad."

            "Well, we can't really train without them."

            "I suppose not."

            "Hey, Cap?"

            "Yeah?"

            "Who's that?"

            Yaozhu pointed over Mako's shoulder, and Mako turned round. An escort was approaching from the direction of the dormitory. Mako recognized him only by the unique uniform he wore. He looked impassive, but walked with some authority, with a purpose in his stride that hadn't been there with any other escort.

            "Quad leader four zero five?" asked the escort, and Mako nodded. "You've been requested to appear before His Excellency as soon as possible. Please follow me."

            Mako shot an uncertain glance to Yaozhu. "Head back. Make sure Jing and Fa are all right, okay? I'll come to the dorm and get you for afternoon training."

            With a sigh, Mako turned back to the courier and nodded. Then the courier led him away. As they walked, Mako couldn't help but wonder what had come up so fast that Guan had to summon him two days in a row. He wondered if maybe there had been some news about deployment: The timeline for society matters seemed to be unreliable at best, if not downright erratic. It was entirely possible that a job had come in, especially if he'd done such a good job at the last one.

            They trekked down into the tunnels again, and again Mako couldn't be certain exactly where they were going. It wasn't the same route as the night prior. They hadn't walked down such a steep incline, and the tunnels hadn't felt so cold or looked so rough.

            They passed through a large circular chamber, from which there exited half a dozen other tunnels in all directions. They entered the corridor directly across the way, and again it sloped downward. For the first time, Mako began to realize just how enormous this place was, and the farther down they went the more tempted Mako became to ignite a flame in his hand. It was dark, and it was cold.

            Eventually the escort stopped and motioned Mako onward. Orange light filtered in through the end of the corridor and flickered such that Mako knew it was lit by fire. Mako thought he'd enter into another wide multi-purpose room, but the path leveled out until it turned sharply to the right, and a formidable crowd stood at the intersection.

            The minute Mako saw the group of men waiting, he knew something had gone terribly wrong. And when he saw Jing and Fa among them, he knew how. They stood among half a dozen others including Guan and his council, who held postures full of aggression. Guan himself looked impassive--he always looked that way--but when Mako came into the light, he smirked.

            "Hello," he said coolly.

            Mako didn't respond at first. His mind was racing, searching for answers, and he could only think of one. Still, he clung to hope, and he replied, "Hello, sir."

            This cordiality seemed only to make Guan's smile widen. "It seems we've had a misunderstanding, you and I, and I'd like to clear the air. Are you willing to answer some questions for me?"

            "Yes, sir."

            "Very good. Now, these two," Guan motioned at Jing and Fa, who despite their stone faces looked mildly afraid, "have given me some information that, if true, could mean our relationship is at an end. That would be a shame. You've been a very promising captain. Now, yesterday I summoned you to a private meeting and asked you if there was anything you'd like to tell me. Perhaps I was unclear in that. I wanted everything. So let's try again: Do you have anything you'd like to tell me, Mako?"

            "No, sir," Mako said. The pit in his stomach grew, and his body grew cold from his stomach out. That tiny shred of hope was fading fast. "I told you everything."

            "Yes, I thought you'd say that," Guan replied. His voice gave no hint of emotion at all, not even of disappointment. "So let me counter you. Your quadmates here informed me last night that you disappeared for a portion of your stay in Republic City. Where did you go?"

            "I was scouting, sir," Mako said.

            "Scouting what, Mako?"

            "The sites that we planned to attack. I wanted to find the best places to--"

            Guan interrupted him with a cold, heartless laugh. "See, you're lying to me." His face went cold. It was the face of a man gone mad. It was the face of death. "I don't like when people lie to me, especially people who I entrusted with important tasks. Now, I'll ask you once more: You were unaccounted for for several hours, where did you go?"

            Mako didn't say anything. He knew better than to say anything now, it had been lesson number one in detective training. When someone is on to you, stay quiet unless you were forced to speak, that way they couldn't catch you in a lie. That way, you could think of what to say to carry on the story.

            Guan stepped forward. "My informants tell me that you went to visit with Chief Lin Beifong. Is that true?"

            For a minute, Mako thought about remaining silent. But he had a bad feeling that if he did, things would go south even faster. Maybe if he talked, he could weasel his way out of this. "Respectfully, sir, if the only informants you're relying on are those two, you might consider finding another source."

            "I did."

            This set Mako on his heels. Stunned, he couldn't even open his mouth.

            "Four accounts, Captain. I've got four separate accounts outside of these two that suggest you were in the vicinity of police headquarters that night. If you were speaking to Chief Beifong, that would be tantamount to treason."

            Mako stood rooted to the spot. He'd been had. Someone had caved.

            Yaozhu.

            The kid was the only person who knew that Mako had been anywhere he shouldn't have been. The kid was the only one who knew that he went to see Beifong and what he'd said to her. But Yaozhu wouldn't have betrayed him, he was too loyal. Everything he did seemed to be in the name of making Mako happy. Half an hour ago Yaozhu had seemed as chipper as any other time. He wasn't good enough to hide his emotions so well.

            The only conclusion was that he'd spilled to Jing and Fa. It made sense. The kid must have been so excited to have been part of a secret mission that he'd said something to those two, and those two had come forward to offer that information to Guan. Information here held value, and both of them had motive. Perhaps they had cut a deal with Guan where if they divulged information about Mako's treason, they would be rewarded or released. Maybe their families would be spared.

            "More, these two informed me several weeks ago that you had sent a letter by messenger hawk," Guan said. "They told me that you were trying to warn Beifong of our locations and plans."

            Mako glanced behind. At some point a group had assembled at his rear. He'd been set up, and he'd walked right into it. There was no escape, but he'd certainly try.

            "I thought so," Guan continued. "Punishment for treason is death, but you've served me extremely well otherwise. You completed the task I assigned you with the Triads, and in doing so you established a connection that I couldn't have created on my own. Knowing you had sent that letter--and knowing what information it contained--allowed us to evacuate the Boiling Rock quarantine and prepare it for whomever the Chief sent to investigate. The place was set with enough explosives to level the island. Pity to those who went."

            Afraid, Mako began preparing himself to fight. His body tensed, and his eyes narrowed. He'd been training for this, he thought. He'd put his body through the wringer to build strength and stamina and increase the power of his bending, and he'd made such progress that lightning came just as easily as fire now. He was more potent than he'd been when he arrived. Maybe that would help him now.

            "Don't try to fight us," Guan said. "It will be better for everyone if you come quietly."

            Mako assumed a defensive posture, and in a cold voice he said, "No."

            Before he could wind up to lightning bend, Guan ducked and spun to the side, opening the way for the shot to connect beyond where he’d been standing. The bolt arced out from Mako's outstretched hand, split and crackled, and struck both Jing and Fa in their middles before they could react. They fell twitching to the floor.

            The remaining men exploded into action, and Mako threw himself to the ground to avoid the first volley of fire and lightning. He spun around to his feet, kicking hot flaming plumes in a wide arc around where he'd fallen. He punched a rushing attacker straight in the face, which hurt his hand, and followed through with a fire blast that seemed to fill the whole of the corridor from which he'd entered.

            But then the combustion started, and Mako knew he'd lost. He'd trained with Yaozhu enough to understand combustion, but he'd never learned how to counter it. He never thought he'd need to.

            The first bolt came at him, and Mako managed to dodge such that the blast shattered the ground ten feet beyond, knocking a few enemies to the floor unconscious. More fire flew about, and Mako dispelled it deftly. But there was too much. The heat was too intense.

            Another combustion bolt whizzed past his head and hit the wall beside him so close that he fell. He understood then that they were shooting to kill.

            Once more, he scrambled to his feet, adrenaline flowing, and tossed another three lightning bolts in as wide an area around himself as he could. Powerful as they were, the arcs of electricity struck only two more men.

            Their numbers were too many, and they overwhelmed him. For a while, Mako stood his ground and deflected, dodged, and countered their shots. But then he mistimed his dodge and pivoted toward the wall to avoid an arc of lightning just as a combustion bolt struck.

            As he fell down, Mako remembered Ba Sing Se. He remembered the heat of the explosion and the chaos of the moment. He remembered tossing his hands out wide and catching the fire blast as it bloomed. This was so similar, he thought. This felt exactly the same. Except this time he hadn't been able to stop it. The corridor was too narrow. Even if he'd been able to anticipate the blast, there would've been nowhere to deflect it.

            He hit the floor hard, and the enemy firebenders overwhelmed him. All he could do now was try to protect himself from further damage, so Mako curled his arms around his head to protect against the unbearable heat. Then there came another combustion bolt, and in the fraction of a second before it connected, Mako knew he wasn't going to wake up.


	26. Admitting the Truth

            By the time the girls touched down in Zaofu, they had run out of things over which to speculate. While they had spent the trip from the Boiling Rock to Republic City in stunned silence, the news they received from Tenzin had sparked new and intense conversation. In the end, it led nowhere, and until Lin came available to answer their questions, they didn't believe it would.

            Zaofu, for its part, seemed unaffected by the turmoil that had taken over the wider world, but it had always been something of an outlier. It had always been as solid as the rock that served as its foundation, and no small part of that foundation was made of Su Beifong and her unyielding but gentle authority.

            Which is why it was strange to find her missing.

            The landing pad had been completely clear, even of guards, and it had taken a fair bit of wandering before the girls found anyone useful to talk to at all. They ran into Huan, who seemed just as aloof and generally useless as usual, but he explained that Su had been cooped up in her office for most of the last two days entertaining phone calls and working through a veritable mountain of paperwork. She’d barely even come out for meals. When Opal asked about Bolin, he shrugged and said, "I don't know where your boyfriend is. Probably tearing up the yard again."

            And then Huan walked away without so much as greeting Korra or Asami.

            Huan had been right: Su was in her office, but she wasn't on the phone. She wasn't moving at all. She sat, elbows propped on her desk with her head in her hands, and she remained completely motionless even after Opal had closed the door behind them. When she finally looked up, her face didn't break into the grin that Korra had been expecting. It stayed blank.

            "Is everything okay?" Opal asked. She hadn't moved from the doorway, but stood with her hand still on the knob. "You look awful."

            Su stood without speaking and walked to the center of the office, where two bright green couches stood opposite each other with a small rectangular table between, and she motioned for the girls to join her. Opal led the way and plopped onto the couch beside her mother. Asami and Korra sat on the other.

            "I'm glad you're all safe," Su said once they had settled, and though her words had been happy, her face didn't follow. She looked distressed. "Have you run into Bolin?"

            "No," Opal said. "We just got here."

            "We thought it'd be best to come see you first thing," Korra added, "since we didn't get the chance to talk to Lin about the Boiling Rock and we'll need to let her and the Firelord know what happened."

            "How did it go?" Su asked. Her concern had shifted toward interest.

            Opal did most of the talking. She explained the quietness of their journey to the Boiling Rock, their plan of attack once they got there, and the things they had seen in the building. And though Su perked up at the mention of the papers they had collected, she remained quiet through the whole talk. Asami filled in a few blanks when Opal prompted, but Korra kept silent. She was too busy watching Su's expression to participate in the talking. A few shades of worry creased her forehead when Opal went into the more harrowing parts of their trip, and she frowned deeply when Opal mentioned the explosions.

            "They knew you were coming," Su said.

            "They must have," Opal replied.

            “Do you know how they were rigged?” Su asked. “Or do you know what they used?”

            All eyes turned to Asami, and Asami shook her head. “It was on a trigger that was linked to the gondola. Otherwise I have no idea.”

            They all went quiet, and after a time spent thinking, Su sighed. "We've got problems here, too," she said. Then, she seemed to harden, and instead of sighing again she took a deep, confident breath that made her appear every bit the leader Korra knew her to be. "I know this is sudden, but I think it's time we came clean to Bolin."

            The girls exchanged worried glances. Opal and Asami looked just as apprehensive as Korra felt. "Why?" Korra asked. "I mean, I knew we'd have to eventually, but why right now? What happened?"

            Su shook her head and curled her legs onto the couch. She shifted uncomfortably. "Because there's no use trying to keep it secret anymore," she said. "I don't know if you girls have realized it, but he's gotten pretty good at reading people these days. Like scary good."

            Another exchange of looks. Korra remembered what Asami had said the night Bolin collapsed, how he'd been able to tell she was dodging his questions, but nothing had been mentioned of it since. Korra wondered if Su had noticed something.  Maybe Su had experienced something.

            "Listen, girls, Mako is alive," Su went on. Korra, Opal, and Asami all gaped at her, but Su didn't allow them the chance to say anything. "Which we suspected, but didn't know for certain. Well, now we know for certain. He was in Republic City and went to see Lin."

            "What?" Korra balked. "What do you mean?"

            "I mean exactly what I said. Mako was in Republic City and showed up at the precinct with a combustion bender. Well, Lin said he was a combustion bender, but he was a kid and didn't have any tattoos on his forehead. She said he looked like the combustion bender that attacked Bolin--she said it was uncanny. But Mako... He had a long conversation with Lin about where he'd been and what he was doing in the city. He warned her about the attacks that happened, and she managed to issue evacuation orders. But he didn't stick around. He bolted."

            Nobody said anything for a long time. It wasn't the news of Mako being alive that had stunned them so thoroughly, Su was right that they had suspected that all along: What stunned them was the manner by which it had been confirmed. He'd been to Republic City? He'd seen Lin? He'd spoken to her? Out of nowhere?

            "When?" Korra asked. "When was he there?"

            "Showed up the day we all left. Well, that evening, anyway."

            "Was he okay?" Asami said. "Was he hurt?"

            "No," Su said, and there seemed to be some surprise in her voice. "Lin said he looked good. She said he looked really good, actually, in better shape than he was in before he left. Not a mark on him."

            "Where had he been?" Asami asked. "What did he tell her?"

            Su shook her head. "Not much, I guess, at least as far as where he'd been. He said that he'd been stationed at Fire Fountain City and that the place was crawling with people.”

            "And why was he there?" Opal asked. "In Republic City, I mean… What was he doing?"

            "He told Lin that he'd been negotiating with the Triads, or something to that effect. He got them to do some kind of reconnaissance. And he also said that the people who sent him were conducting the attacks to kidnap people."

            More strained silence.

            "I guess all of that is beside the point,” Su continued. “The conclusion is that Lin wants to organize a raid on Baihe Island--that's where Fire Fountain City is located--but she can't pull any forces out of the Republic because of the attacks, and the Firelord won’t commit yet. She’s getting closer, but you know how she is. So, Lin wants you all to go as soon as possible and get Mako out regardless of what the Firelord thinks." She paused. "I just found out about all this recently, within the last couple of days, and I wanted to wait until you girls got here to tell Bolin about it. Tenzin said that you'd be back here soon, and I figured Bolin would need the extra support once he found out the truth of the matter. It's going to tear him up." She paused and looked deliberately at each one of them. "And I'm glad you showed up earlier than we planned, because I haven't been able to stay in the same room with him since I found out."

            "Why not?" Korra asked.

            "Because he _knows_."

            "He knows what?" asked Opal.

            Korra had a good feeling she knew what Su was going to say.

            "I don't know how to explain it," Su said, and again she looked at her feet, all her confidence apparently gone. "He can tell something's wrong. He tried to explain it to me last night, but I don't know that I really understand. He said that he's started being able to feel people. Somehow he uses his earthbending to tell how people feel and see where people are. He said it’s got something to do with vibrations in the earth and that it’s stronger when he’s barefoot.”

            "That's how he knew I was dodging his questions," Asami said in a voice that meant she'd come to a definite conclusion. "I was sitting on his feet! That’s how he knew I was lying to him. Does that mean he's a truth seer?"

            "No," Su said. "I don't think so. Did he call me on lying? Yes, he did, and with certainty. But he said himself that the only reason he knew was because I felt nervous to him. He can tell someone is lying because they tense up, or something like that, because something changes in the way they feel to him." She shook her head as if clearing out a thought. "I don't think that makes him a truth seer as much as it makes him sensitive to the earth, but then again, I don’t know how truth-seeing works. I never bothered to ask mom about it. But, I mean, Bolin is a lavabender, after all, so why wouldn't he be able to do other weird, rare things? Anyway, I've been trying to keep my distance ever since, because if he knew how anxious I've been for all of you to show up here, he'd never leave me alone."

            "So we have to tell him," Opal said. "Where is he?"

            Su shrugged. "We're not telling anyone anything tonight," she said. "We'll wait until tomorrow. I need to get some more information from Lin, if I can, and I'll give her your details about the Boiling Rock and have her check with Tenzin on those documents, if he hasn’t already given them to her. We need to get everything we possibly can squared away, and I'd love to have a complete plan of action. That way we can make sure all of our turtleducks are in a row before we go upsetting Bolin too much. We can make him angry, but then we can calm him down by explaining exactly what we're going to do about it."

            The mention of upsetting Bolin upset Korra. She'd been on the receiving end of his anger too many times for her liking already. The tiniest things set him off, things that would never have fazed him before. It seemed like he had no control over himself because he would lash out and then regret it and then lash out again. And this revelation would definitely garner another blowout, to say the least. 

            All manner of terrible scenarios started rolling through Korra's imagination, ranging from the utterly absurd to stark realism. She imagined he might lavabend at her out of pure rage like he had done to Katara at the South Pole. That sight had been both awe-inspiring and wholly terrifying: If he turned that kind of power against her there would be no way for her to counter it short of knocking him out, even as the Avatar, and that was only if she could get a shot in. Then she imagined that he'd just yell a lot, and she could practically hear it. That notion made her anxious, too. Then she imagined that he'd hurt her some other way. He might try to hit her. He might try to earthbend at her. Korra didn't know. She didn't know what he was capable of anymore, mentally or physically. But a large part of her knew that no matter what he did, he'd be perfectly justified in all of it.

            Korra had always known they'd have to tell the truth at some point. Ever since Lin presented them with Mako's letter those weeks ago, she knew that they'd have to tell Bolin that they'd been keeping the truth from him. But even if they had wanted to tell him straightaway they wouldn't have been able to. There hadn't been a good moment, a moment when Bolin was capable of handling the news.

            They'd had their first suspicions during the Earth Summit nearly a month ago, when they had spoken to Prince Wu in the hospital, and at that time Bolin had been too angry to listen to reason. He'd blown up at Su and Lin, nearly liquefied the precinct, and then stormed off without a word. And then he'd been so unstable that he'd terrified Opal, and he'd left without even saying good-bye to her. Then, beyond anyone's wildest imaginings, things had gotten worse.

            No way could Bolin have handled the news post-collapse. He'd been stuck in bed with no brain for several days after the fact, and then for the next days his mind had run on half power at best. Even on a good day he could barely speak. He couldn't walk. He couldn't think. He hadn't been able to play Pai Sho, and though he'd never been the best player he'd at least been able to hold his own. He couldn't even remember the pieces.

            Then the other half of his mind started to kick in, albeit slowly, and he'd grown even less stable. Something in his brain seemed to have changed, and it had changed drastically. Korra couldn't remember the last time he cracked a joke that wasn't full of disdain or sarcasm, and she'd not heard a genuine laugh out of him for as long as she could remember. He'd been radiating a coldness and detachment that Korra had never experienced out of anyone before.

            Korra felt only slightly better after these thoughts. She settled on the idea that too many tiny things had gone wrong for them to have dropped such an enormous load on him. The right opportunity hadn’t presented itself, and he might not be ready for it now. He'd been in Zaofu for something close to a week, and she didn't know what kind of progress he'd been making, if he'd made any at all. Su hadn't mentioned it. But if he was half as bad as he was before he'd been forced to come here...

            Korra worried that when Bolin found out he'd go into another tailspin. And she worried even more that this time they wouldn't be able to pull him out of it. They'd barely been able to pull him out of it last time, if indeed they had succeeded at all. Bolin had gotten so good at lying and covering his tracks and neglecting himself without letting anyone see it that Korra worried he'd do it all over again. And now that he knew they were on to him, he'd probably be more covert. If he'd truly wanted to hurt himself before, she didn't want to imagine how he'd feel knowing that the people he loved most had betrayed him.

            She didn't know how the conversation with Su had ended. She'd been too caught up in her own worries to really pay attention to things outside her mind. But she and Asami were suddenly outside, strolling through the courtyard toward the guest rooms. Whatever they had talked about seemed to have had no real affect on Asami, and Korra wasn't surprised. Asami had always been able to reason her way out of worry. She was just that logical. But Korra wasn't the same. Her feet were moving of their own accord. It felt like she was floating, like her head had detached from her body in some kind of surreal dream.

            All the anxiety Korra had missed feeling lately seemed to have come back tenfold. And now it wasn't a happy, warm anxiety either. It wasn't butterflies in the stomach like it had been when she thought about the kiss. Now it was cold. Now it felt like someone had died all over again, like it had felt the day Lin told them about Ba Sing Se when this whole mess started. It felt the same as it had in the combustion bender's cell, when she'd heard Asami's terrified scream and she'd run out to find her on the ground, Bolin half on top of her and not moving or talking or responding in any way at all. She'd wanted to cry then, but had managed to hold herself together at least for Asami's sake.

             "It's going to be a long night," Asami said, and she stopped so suddenly that Korra almost ran into her. They had made it to the guest rooms, and presently stood outside two neighboring doors. "I might try to stay in. I don't want to worry about tomorrow until I absolutely have to, and I figure Bolin won't come looking for me, especially not if Opal manages to find him."

            Korra didn't ask what Asami meant by that.

            "Hey, are you all right?" Asami asked. She touched Korra's hand gently. "You look a little sick. Do you feel okay?"

            "I'm fine," Korra lied. “I’m just worn out.” What could she say to Asami now? Maybe if she'd explained the situation earlier it would be okay to tell her that the prospect of Bolin's anger had her well beyond mortified, but Asami didn't know. She didn't know what had happened at the hospital. She didn't know how torn up and conflicted Korra had been feeling ever since. And now that Korra knew that Bolin was going to hate her--he was going to hate all of them--it ate her up even more.

            "I think you should lay down for a while," Asami said. She cracked open one of the doors and motioned for Korra to enter. "You want me to come get you for dinner?"

            "Yeah," Korra replied. She had no energy, and her voice conveyed that clearly enough. She didn't know what else to say, so she accepted Asami's kiss on the cheek, entered the room, and closed the door quietly behind her.

            Korra spent the rest of the afternoon pacing around her room and laying idly on the bed staring at the ceiling. The more she thought on the matter of Bolin the more nervous she became. She'd cried out of stress for twenty minutes as soon as she was sure Asami had gone, and even though the tears had stopped, it felt to Korra that they might spring up again any second.

            She tried to meditate, but every time she closed her eyes she could hear Bolin yelling. She tried to sleep, but she couldn't drift off for fear of dreaming about him. And it wouldn't matter if the dream was good or bad: Any thoughts about him right now wouldn't soothe her mind. They would only lead back to the inevitable: She had wronged him by keeping secrets, and he would hate her for it. And while it was bad enough to have such a close friend angry, she couldn’t fathom how awful it would be now that things had gotten complicated.

            By the time dinner rolled around, Korra had come to a difficult conclusion: She couldn't bear the thought of Bolin being angry at her. And she wasn't scared of the yelling and she wasn't scared of his bending or anything like that. She was afraid of what would come after. He'd been angry before, yes, and he'd yelled at her before, but every time he did he seemed to calm down quickly and regret his actions immediately. He apologized profusely, almost manically. But Korra knew in her heart that there would be no apologizing this time. He wouldn't regret anything. What would come tomorrow would be worse than anything Korra had yet seen by orders of magnitude. He’d never trust them again. She would never have the chance to talk to him about how conflicted she felt.

            She would be forced to carry the memory of that night all by herself, possibly forever, and Korra wasn't sure that she could accept that.

            Asami knocked on Korra's door at a quarter to six, and Korra followed her to the dining hall silently, her head held low. Asami babbled on about any number of things as they walked, from the weather in this province to the reconstruction of the domes to the newest sculpture Huan had put in the courtyard, but Korra didn't pay attention to any of it. Every time she looked at Asami, even if it was just the back of Asami's head, her gut twisted with guilt and anxiety. How could she have kept everything a secret from Asami for so long? Wasn't her withholding the truth about her night with Bolin the same as her withholding the truth about Mako? Wasn't it all equally deceptive? Wouldn't Asami be just as angry with her as Bolin was going to be if Korra told the truth? And wouldn't she be justified in that?

            Korra didn't eat much. She poked at her vegetables and nibbled at the rice, but the knot in her stomach had tied itself too tight for her to stomach much else. When Asami asked again what was wrong and every eye at the table looked at her, Korra felt like she might throw up. She worried that they would see through her. She worried that they would figure out her secret just by looking at her. She kept her mouth shut, unable to think of a suitable lie and fearing that any attempt would betray her.

            In the end, she was just glad that Bolin hadn't shown up.

            Opal had reported that she'd found him playing with Pabu in the middle of what had once been a nice green area behind the compound, and that he'd seemed on the level. She said that he'd looked good, that he'd looked a little bit stronger and had seemed a little happier, and that he had more color and better energy. She didn't go into much more detail than that, and for that Korra was thankful. She didn't want to think about how they must've kissed each other and how he must've held her and how...

            Korra sighed and excused herself from the table.

            It didn't take long for Asami to find her, but it wasn't like Korra was trying to hide. She'd gone straight back to her room and collapsed onto her bed, then buried her face in her pillow to try and stifle the emotions. She couldn't figure out why she was so conflicted and so confused, and that scared her more than anything.

            Asami sat beside Korra and patted her on the thigh, but Korra didn't bother looking at her. She didn't think it necessary. Besides, if she showed her face to Asami now, Asami would see her red eyes and her puffy cheeks and know she'd been crying, and then Asami would ask questions, and Korra wasn't sure that she could hold everything in.

            "Okay," Asami said at last in a gentle voice, "what's going on?"

            It seemed that Asami would be asking questions anyway, and for a moment after Asami had finished speaking, Korra lay in silence, contemplating her choices. She could lie or she could tell the truth. There were no half-measures here. Half-measures would only make things worse.

            "I'm scared," Korra said. It was the truth. She was absolutely terrified of so many different things. All the secrets and lies and omissions seemed to be caving in on her all at once.

            "What are you scared of?"

            "Tomorrow."

            It wasn’t a lie.

            Asami lay down beside Korra, removed the pillow from her head, and stroked her hair. "We all are, a little bit," she said placidly. "There's no getting around that. But who knows, maybe it'll go over well. Maybe knowing about Mako will help Bolin get stronger. It'll give him a reason to try again. It might even him out a bit."

            Korra shook her head. "I don't think it's going to be that easy."

            Asami sighed. "No, I know it won’t be easy. Bolin's going to be really angry. But he's been really angry before and we've dealt with it. He's yelled at all of us before, but we've recovered. And he's recovered, too. Besides, Bolin's way too nice to hold a grudge for too long. It'll be rough for a while, but things will work out. Things always work out in the end."

            Despite her best effort, Korra burst into fat, ugly tears that only made her feel more self-conscious. She wanted to pull the pillow back over her head and disappear into it entirely. She didn't want Bolin to be angry at her. And she didn't want Asami to be angry at her, either

            "Really now," Asami said once Korra had calmed a little bit, "talk to me. You've never acted this way because you were _scared_ before. Normally you get scared and you get angry about it. There's something else...What is it?"

            Asami had asked the question so nicely. She'd sounded so genuinely concerned.

            With an enormous breath, Korra sat up and rubbed her eyes hard with the backs of her hands. And then she stared at her knees and fidgeted. She had to say something. She had to get it off her chest. If now was the time to come clean about secrets kept from others, she had to come clean, too.

            "I..." Korra stammered, and her throat tightened. "I need to tell you something."

            Now Asami looked concerned. "What’s wrong?"

            "I'm scared of Bolin being angry at me," Korra admitted, but the feeling went deeper than the words could ever have conveyed. "The thought of him being angry at me again... I can't take it. I can't stand the thought of him not talking to me anymore."

            "We all feel that way, Korra. None of us want him to be upset, but it can't be helped."

            "No," Korra replied. Her voice had taken on an emotional quiver again. "No, you don't understand. You _can't_ understand. I... The night he... I..." She swallowed the lump in her throat and breathed deep to stop the stammering. "I think I have a crush on Bolin."

            Korra dared not look at Asami now. She could feel her staring and the tense silence stayed for far too long. But then Asami let out a laugh that Korra hadn't been expecting, and Korra looked up, stunned.

            "Is that it?" Asami said. A bit of joy seemed to have come back to her. "That's it? A crush?"

            Korra looked down, unable to say anything at all. Now she felt both horrified and embarrassed.

            "I can understand that," Asami said. "I mean, he did look pretty good before he left for Zaofu. And there's nothing wrong with having a little crush on someone. We're only human, after all."

            "No, Asami, you don't understand," Korra said. Her voice had gone very small but very serious. She could scarcely force the words out.

            "What don't I understand?"

            "The night of the collapse... The night I spent with him to make sure nothing else happened... He... He and I..." Korra paused and glanced at Asami out of the corner of her eye. The worry had come back tenfold, and Asami's brow had wrinkled. Korra couldn't tell if Asami was more confused or concerned. She looked back down and started wringing her hands nervously. "He and I slept..." She swallowed hard again. "He kissed me. And I kind of... I think I kind of liked it."

            Asami didn't say anything, and the knot in Korra's stomach began to inflate like a balloon. She didn't know how to explain herself to make the truth sound less horrible, but she couldn't keep herself quiet, either. Now she'd started talking she couldn't stop it. The dam had burst. She had to make it better.

            "The first time he did it I was a little scared," Korra sniffled,  now somewhat frantic, "because I'd just woke up and his arm was around me and his hand was under my shirt and on my stomach and he thought that I was Opal."

            "Wait, what? The _first_ time?" There was death in Asami's voice now. Korra had never heard such a tone come from her. "What do you mean, _the first time_?"

            "He woke up, like I said..."

            "And you were _sleeping_ with him?" Asami interrupted hotly. "You were _sleeping with him_? Like… Like…"

            "No! Not like that! I was tired!" Korra cried. "I was tired and I was worried! There was only one bed! And I fell asleep and when I woke up it all happened, and then he thought I was Opal and he kissed me and I didn't know what to do. I couldn't stop it! I didn't know what to do! I was too tired! I was confused!" The tears had come back again. There was no hiding it, just as there was no hiding Asami's rage. "And then we laid there for a while and he kept _touching_ me... He kept touching me everywhere--"

            " _Touching_ you? _Everywhere_?"

            For a second, Korra couldn't speak through the tears. Instead, she just nodded.

            "Touching you everywhere..." Asami's voice had gone very shrill and very sharp. It didn't sound like she was going to cry at all.

            "He kept... I don't know how to describe it, but it made me... He was being so gentle about it, and I didn't know he could do that kind of thing and it scared me and... He caught me off guard!"

            Asami's eyes had gone wide now. She looked disbelieving, but she didn't say anything. Korra looked away. She had to get it all out, no matter what.

            "And then he told me that he didn't think he was going to remember any of it, and he sounded really sad about it, and then he kissed me again and it... I don't know!"

            "How many times?"

            "Three."

            " _Three_? And you never thought to stop him?"

            Korra shook her head. "I couldn't stop it. I didn't know how. And on top of all of it he told me that he loved me."

            Asami stood. Korra could feel her anger. She was seething. "No wonder," she spat. "No wonder you spent so much time with him! You... You were..."

            "Asami, wait," Korra pleaded. "Just... Just wait..."

            "Wait for what, Korra? For you to tell me all the other stuff you two did while you were alone together? No, I'm not going to wait."

            "We didn't do _anything_!" Korra cried.

            “Clearly.” Asami rounded on Korra, and Korra felt her throat clench up again. "Did you kiss him back?"

            Korra nodded. She couldn't lie now. That would only make it worse.

            "And you _liked_ it?"

            At a loss for anything else to say, Korra nodded.

            Asami let out an incredulous, angry, and disbelieving laugh. "And that explains everything," she cried. Then her voice went dangerously quiet again. "It explains everything completely, why you were acting so weird, why you were acting so nervous every time he came around. It was because you... You had feelings?"

            "I don't know!" Korra cried. "I don't know! I'm confused and... And I don't know!"

            "And he told you that he loves you."

            "He said he thought he did, but he couldn't remember."

            The laugh again. "I don't know what's worse, Korra. I don't know if I'm angrier that you kissed him or that you kept all of this away from me. I thought I knew you better than that. I thought you cared a little more than that. I thought you could be honest with me."

            "I do care! And... I didn't kiss him, he kissed me!"

            "What does it matter?" Asami spat. "You _liked_ it, and you liked it enough that you'd kiss him back and then lie to me about it," She went very quiet. "I don't even know you. A crush is one thing, but you crossed the line, Korra."

            Korra felt the tears coming on again, and she wiped frantically at her eyes. "Asami, I don't know what to do! I can't have you mad at me, too! I don't even know how to feel anymore!"

            "Well, how _do_ you feel?" Asami asked. She still sounded exceptionally angry, but somehow calm. It was like she was holding it all in. "Right now, if Bolin was to walk in this room, what would you do?"

            "I'd be nervous!"

            "Why?" Asami cried. "Why would you be nervous if there was nothing between you? You've been hanging around him for _years_ , Korra, and you've never been nervous before. We've all done all kinds of stuff together, and none of it has ever been weird! If none of this mattered like you keep trying to convince me, then you wouldn't feel that way!"

            "I feel nervous because every time he touches me I get all tingly and warm and..." she swallowed hard again. "And every time I think about it my stomach does flip flops and I don't know if it's because I'm just... I don't know!"

            "Are you kidding?"

            "No! I'm confused! I like you, Asami, I really, really do, I love you! And I want to be with you right now. I don't know what else to do!"

            Asami shook her head. "That's great. You don't want to be with me because you care, you want to be with me so I can tell you what to do and drag you out of the mess you made."

            "No!" Korra said. "No! That's not it at all!"

            Once again, Asami shook her head, but this time she turned again for the door. "I don't even know what to think anymore."

            "Don't go!"

            With her hand on the door handle, Asami turned. "I'm going," she said. "And we're not okay. This isn't okay, Korra. I need to think. Don't follow me."

            Then Asami disappeared, and Korra sat staring at the door. It had gone so badly, she thought. She had wanted to make the admission to clear the air and get some help dealing with her conflicted feelings. But it had all gone wrong. All Korra wanted was someone to talk to. She needed someone to help her work through it all, and now the only person she felt like she could rely on had walked out on her.

            She'd done a horrible job explaining herself, she knew, but she hadn't been prepared to explain herself, either. She couldn't even muddle through her own brain, let alone explain what was going on inside of it to someone else.

            Korra dropped her head in her hands and cried again. She hated herself. She'd blown her only chance to get help. Asami was her only hope. Asami was the only one she could talk to about the whole mess. She couldn't talk to Opal for reasons that, even in Korra's confusion, were obvious. And she couldn't talk to Su. Su had enough on her plate already without the addition of relationship drama.

            She definitely couldn't talk to Bolin. Maybe she could have talked to him before all of this happened. She'd confided in him a thousand times before about everything under the sun. Not now. Not knowing that they were going to break him again tomorrow. And what would she say to him anyway? _Hey, you kissed me and it was pretty good, but I also really like Asami. What should I do?_ Even without the complications, she knew he wouldn't give her a good answer. He'd always had feelings for her, and he admitted them freely and often. He'd admitted it to her face even recently. If she walked up to him and told him how conflicted she was feeling, he'd be over the moon.

            Wouldn't he?

            Or maybe he'd be angry. Everything seemed to make him angry lately, even things that shouldn't have. But the more Korra thought on it, the more she realized that anger in this situation would be perfectly justified. She'd broken his heart once. No, she hadn't broken it, she'd completely obliterated it, lit the ashes on fire, and stomped all over the remains. He’d done nothing to deserve it. And every time he'd subtly reminded her over the next years that he was still open to the idea of dating her, she'd shut him down point blank. The exchange had become so routine that Korra didn't even think about it anymore. It happened so often that she viewed it as a joke. She'd traipsed around with Mako, she'd been utterly single, she'd started a relationship with Asami, all while Bolin watched from the sideline. If she was to backpedal now after all of his trying and all of her rejecting him, if she was to tell him that she was game, he'd be outraged. And he'd be right to feel that way, too.

            Korra felt stuck. She felt sick. Asami was gone, and she probably wasn't coming back any time soon. But Korra couldn't blame her, not really. If the roles had been reversed, Korra would've been just as upset. She would've walked out on Asami the same as Asami had walked out on her.

            With a deep breath, Korra forced herself to calm. She counted the seconds of inhalation, of exhalation, and tried to weigh her options. She could chase after Asami, but wasn't sure what good it would do. Even if Korra managed to find her, there'd be no way Asami would want to talk to her. There would be no way for Korra to force her to talk, either. In fact, that would probably just make things worse. No, Asami needed space, and Korra cared enough to give it to her.

            But that meant there really was nothing Korra could do to fix the situation. She'd followed a road that had led her to a dead end. There was no turning around: She couldn't take back what she'd admitted, and there was no going forward, either. She wondered how many times along the way she could've turned, how many opportunities she'd had to avoid this situation entirely, and she regretted yet again that she hadn't explained what had happened earlier. She should've admitted it straight up front instead of holding it all in. Nothing good ever came of holding things in. Nothing good ever came of keeping secrets. She’d always known that. And now she was stuck.

            What more could she do than sit there entertaining the possibilities and waiting for the inevitable? Asami would go sit by herself and think, the same as Korra was doing now, because that's what Asami did when she was upset. She sought solace in solitude. She wouldn't talk to anyone unless she couldn't work a problem out on her own, and Korra supposed that was a silver lining. The odds that news of her own stupidity would get out were fairly slim. Asami had always been careful like that.

            At the very worst, Asami would go yell at Bolin about it, but Korra doubted that, too. Asami knew better than that. She had more tact than that.

            Or at least, Korra hoped she did.

 


	27. The Complexity of Love

            For the first time since arriving in Zaofu, Bolin woke up confused. He knew he was in his room and he knew he was in his bed, but he didn't know when he'd gotten there and he hadn't put on his nightclothes before laying down. That alone was unlike him, but that he'd fallen asleep above the covers pushed the matter from being a little bit weird to being alarmingly strange.

            Yet Pabu was there, curled up in the crook of his neck, and that made Bolin feel just a little bit better.

            He lay abed for a long time staring at the ceiling and trying to remember. Pabu's tail twitched against his ear. He'd been in his quiet place last he remembered, and he'd been engaged in some of the most productive but intense lavabending he'd ever tried. Su had been there, and she had been encouraging him. She'd been excited to see how he bent the earth, and she'd helped him work out so many things that he'd never have been able to figure out on his own. Mostly, he remembered how elated she'd been when he managed to propel the lava forward and solidify it into razor sharp shards of obsidian that lodged themselves deep in a distant tree.

            A swell of happiness erupted in Bolin's middle, warmed him through his chest, and filled him with new energy. He'd done it, despite all his worry and doubt and weakness. He'd managed to waterbend. Or lavabend. Or... _Wavabend_...?

            He laughed so suddenly and so loudly that Pabu jumped up with a start, nearly clawed him in the eye, and scrambled beneath the bed. He felt such joy that he didn't care about the stinging scratch Pabu had just left on his face or the fact that it felt there might be the tiniest drop of blood rolling down his cheek. It didn't matter, he figured: Pabu had clawed him before. He felt too genuinely happy to care, and he couldn't remember the last time he'd felt that way.

            Bolin clapped his hands over his eyes and laughed until his stomach hurt. He'd managed to lavabend, and it hadn’t been any old lavabending. It had been spectacular. It had been precise and efficient and undoubtedly effective.

            Maybe he wasn't broken after all.

            Eventually his laughter died down and the overwhelming mirth gave way to a general excitement and energy that filled Bolin from his head to his toes. With that energy, he sat up, wiped at the cut on his face with the back of his hand, and regarded the blood that came away.

            "You got me good, Pabs," he said blandly. "Well played."

            Pabu chattered from beneath the bed. Bolin couldn't blame him for being angry. That had been the second time in less than a day that Bolin had scared the life out of him.

With every intention of heading immediately back to the clearing to continue practicing lavabending, Bolin kicked his legs over the side of the bed and stood.

            And then somehow, he was sitting on the floor. And then he was confused again.

            In the silence of uncertainty, Pabu poked his head out from beneath the bed and stared. Bolin had been around Pabu long enough to recognize his look of concern.

            "I'm fine," he said, and Pabu whined. He truly felt all right, if extraordinarily tired, except that all the happiness seemed to have suddenly gone out of him "Really. I'm fine. I just... I need to take it easy today, I guess."

            Even as he said the words, Bolin couldn't be sure if he was being genuine or if he was being hopeful. So, he just sat there, and he thought about it.

            The fact that he'd fallen was definitely something to be concerned about, but he couldn't be sure just how concerned he should feel. Lavabending had always been an exhausting pursuit, and he'd not been pacing himself, not by a long shot. On top of that, he'd skipped at least one meal yesterday, if what he was ingesting could even be called a meal. Or had he skipped two? Three? Now he thought on the matter he couldn't remember, and that worried him, too. That kind of forgetfulness was no small part of how this whole mess had started. He wondered if everything was catching up with him again, and the last time his hunger and exhaustion had crept up on him, he'd panicked and fainted and ended up off his feet for days with everyone he knew worried he was going to die.

            He couldn't let that happen again, and not only because it was unhealthy. It was embarrassing, too.

            By this point, Pabu had crawled back out from beneath the bed and had started nosing him affectionately in the hand. Bolin sighed and scooped him into his lap. "I think I screwed up again," he said, and he wiped at his cheek. Still bleeding. "You really did get me good, didn't you?" Bolin pressed one hand against the cut and scratched Pabu behind the ears with the other. "Or was that you telling me to stay in bed?"

            Pabu nibbled his finger.

            "I figured as much."

            Bolin patted Pabu on the rear, and once the ferret had cleared away he pushed himself laboriously to his feet. He wobbled, unsteady, then sat heavily on the bed.

            "Well, I guess it counts as rest even if we don't sleep," he said when Pabu hopped up after him. "And I'm sure Su won't care if we skip..." Bolin stopped, confused again. He didn't even know what time it was. How long had he been sleeping? Had he passed out or had he gotten to his bed safely? If he'd passed out again there could be no telling how long he'd been out, but it would explain why he was so tired.

            Bolin lay back, folded his hands behind his head, and resumed staring at the ceiling and trying to remember. Little snippets came back easily enough: The bending, Su's laughing at him, her general excitement over the whole spectacle. But something in his gut said that everything hadn't been so good, and he didn't know why. He had a weird feeling that told him something was _off_.

            He started to think backward. She'd sat there, coaching him, and before that they had been talking. He'd gotten angry at her. He'd gotten unreasonably angry at her. But why? He'd gotten angry at so many people about so many things he didn't even know what triggered it any more.

            They had been talking about Opal. That Opal would arrive at Zaofu sometime this very day, and that they had Su and Bataar's blessing to stay together. Fair enough. But she had mentioned Lin. She had talked to Lin about him, too. And as soon as the conversation had turned to that, things had gone from bad to worse. Bolin had gotten indignant and Su had gotten scared. But was she scared by Bolin's anger or by something else?

            He remembered that she'd admitted to lying. And then he remembered that he hadn't pressed her about it. She had expertly dodged the issue by using his emotional instability against him. When Bolin recognized this, he was momentarily angry again. But then that gave way to curiosity: What had she been lying about?

            He would have to find her, and he would have to ask her.

            At some point in his lazing about, Bolin slept without dreaming, and when he woke again he felt equally better and worse than he had earlier. Physically, it seemed he was ready to move around, it felt like he might be able to keep his feet and practice bending, but all the giddiness he'd felt earlier seemed to have gone away in his sleep. And now his cheek hurt on top of it all.

            With another enormous breath, Bolin pushed himself to his feet, and though he swayed for a second he managed to keep upright. Then he said, "Come on, Pabu," and when Pabu jumped to his shoulder, Bolin left without bothering to put on his shoes.

            He stopped in the empty dining room on his way outside and sat for ten minutes before anyone noticed him. But then, as always, Suyin's chef came bearing his cup, and Bolin took it begrudgingly. The only difference was that this time, the chef joined him at the table and looked skeptically between Pabu and Bolin as though he was offended to have an animal at the table.

            Bolin eyed him over the rim of his glass. "What?"

            "Su wanted me to check in with you and see if you were enjoying the food."

            Bolin snorted. He'd stopped trying to taste or smell anything before he drank it--generally it was gone before such things would matter--and he'd long since stopped wondering what exactly it was that went into the colorful liquids. "It's fine, I guess," Bolin said, and he drained his cup, then pushed it back toward the chef. "There anything else?"

            "Is there anything you'd like me to change?"

            Bolin's face screwed up at first, confused, but then he considered the question carefully. "Well," he said, "I know I've missed a couple meals lately."

            "I know."

            Now Bolin felt a little bad, and his ears and neck started getting warm. "I just don't want to have to check in so much."

            "I don't see why that would be an issue," said the chef thoughtfully. "I can speak to Su about rescheduling, if you don't skip any more appointments."

 _Appointments_ , Bolin thought. Of course, this would be like an appointment for him, something done out of duty rather than genuine concern.

            "And Su would also like you to try something solid in the next day or two. I'll need to know what you want."

            "Great," Bolin said, unable to keep his sarcastic jibe inside this time. "Whatever it is you settle on, make it easy to throw up."

            The chef didn't seem to appreciate Bolin's snide attitude, and the look he currently wore told Bolin that fact in clear terms. Bolin felt bad. He sagged in his chair.

            "Today is fine, I guess," Bolin said uncertainly. "But don't go out of your way."

            "And your menu of choice?"

            Bolin shrugged and thought. If there was one thing he could have, what would it be? The answer came to him immediately, so he looked squarely at the chef and said, "Seaweed noodles. Water tribe style."

            "And at what time would you like them?"

            Bolin shrugged. "I don't know. Call it three o'clock? Lunch time? Second lunch? Whatever."

            "Yes, sir," the chef said, and he got to his feet. "Understood. Please don't be late."

            After the chef left, Bolin sat at the table feeling stupid and self-conscious for a while. He'd never liked being referred to as _sir_ ; it sounded pretentious and disingenuous. After a while he stood and went on his way.

            He started the rest of his day the same way he'd done the last two running, with a quiet sit in the middle of his clearing watching Pabu entertain himself and listening to the earth. There wasn't much to hear outside of cars and guards and Pabu jumping around, and he still couldn't feel himself, at least not in any meaningful capacity. He wondered whether he'd have been able to earlier that morning when he'd been so happy. Then he sighed. No use thinking about that now, no use wishing that the good feeling would come back. Dwelling on the fact that it had come and gone would only make things worse.

            It hit Bolin then that he was feeling particularly glum, and that it had to be caused by something beyond exhaustion. Maybe Su's lying had somehow gotten under his skin. Maybe his blood sugar was low. He didn't know, but he dearly wanted to figure it out.

            He sat there for a while longer, having moved on to the inward debate on whether he should be practicing his bending, when he felt Opal's familiar footsteps approaching from the rear. He jumped up, all his angst forgotten.

            "There you are," she said, and when she smiled the same shock of joy he'd felt earlier shot through him again. "I was beginning to think I'd never find you."

            Bolin didn't know what to say. He knew he'd be happy to see Opal, but he hadn't realized just how intense a happiness it would be. Before he'd even registered she was really standing in front of him she'd wrapped her arms around his middle and pressed her head into his shoulder, and Bolin knew that everything was right in the world.

            "When did you get here?" he asked.

            "A little while ago," Opal replied, and she pulled out of his arms. "We had to go talk to my mom."

            "Oh," Bolin said. "I haven't seen her all day."

            Opal glanced at the ground and for a fraction of a second her smile dimmed. "She's been doing paperwork all morning," she explained slowly. "Earth Nation stuff, you know." Then Opal looked back at him and she eyed him up and down in a way that made him feel pleasantly uncomfortable. "You look good. I like the clothes." She traced her finger down his chest and kept her eyes low. "They're a good color for you."

            Unsure how to respond to this, Bolin shrugged. "I guess."

            Opal looked up as if to laugh again, but her expression went a bit grave. "Except for this," she thumbed at the cut on his cheek. "What did you do?"

            "Pabu got me this morning," Bolin said. He'd forgotten it was even there. "I scared him."

            "How'd you do that?"

            Bolin shrugged. He didn't want to admit the truth to Opal, at least not that particular truth. He felt a little embarrassed about it now, about the fact that his laughter had become so scarce a commodity that it had scared Pabu into hiding. "Think I got up too fast. He was sleeping on my shoulder. It's not the first time I've done it. It happens."

            Opal's smile widened again. "Well, I'm glad to see you, cut on your face or not," she said playfully, and then she stood on her tiptoes and kissed him. There was nothing playful about it. In fact, it had come so suddenly and so powerfully that it left Bolin stunned yet pleasantly surprised. It was the kind of kiss that told him he wouldn't be having a very restful night.

            Then he remembered his chat with Su, and he pulled away from Opal. He watched a sly grin come onto her face and she laid her hand flat on his middle.

            "I've got good news," he said with effort. Her touch was distracting to say the least. "Your mom..."

            Opal's brow raised playfully. "I kiss you and the first thing you think of is my mom?"

            "No! No! Not like that..." Bolin paused, and he looked at the ground, confused. "That... Would be really weird..."

            "You're cute when you're confused, did I ever tell you that?"

            "Well good for you," Bolin replied smartly, "because I've got all the brain damage you could ever hope for." He wasn't sure the joke had come out right, because Opal frowned. Hoping to save the moment, he pressed on. "That doesn't matter. What I mean to say is that your mom talked to me last night and told me that you and I should stay together. And by stay together, I mean in the same room. While we sleep. And things like that."

            "She did?"

            "She did."

            "That was nice of her."

            Bolin didn't want to mention Su's ulterior motive. That would only ruin the mood and he didn't figure Opal needed to be told anyway. She'd keep an eye on him no matter what. That was just how Opal was. She always looked out for people.

            "She said we could stay in your room or in mine, it doesn't matter. Heck, I bet we could even take turns if we really wanted to. Your bed is bigger than mine but my actual room is bigger than yours." He paused thoughtfully again, then added, "There's more room for _activities_."

            Opal laughed. Then she kissed him again, and this time he returned the gesture, leaving no doubt in his mind now that no matter whose room they chose, there wouldn't be much sleeping to be had. He was happy he hadn't worn himself out with lavabending all morning.

            "So, what have you been doing out here?" Opal asked once she'd pulled back from him. "All by yourself, and all. What are you doing?"

            "Really?" Bolin asked incredulously. There was no hiding exactly what he'd been up to: What once had been a particularly gorgeous clearing had been scarred and scorched all over the place, and the tree into which Bolin had chucked his obsidian shards bore an enormous black mark up its side, never mind the pieces of rock sticking out of its trunk. "I figured it would be obvious."

            "It is," she said. "I was just making conversation. But it's no wonder Huan was so upset. He liked coming out here to paint."

            "Huan was upset?"

            Opal laughed again. Every time she laughed Bolin loved her a little bit more. Her laugh was like a million silver bells ringing in his heart that warmed him all over. "He talked about you like you were a dog," she giggled, "said you were tearing up the yard."

            "Well, he's not wrong," Bolin replied, deadpan. "I've definitely been tearing up the yard."

            "But that's good, isn't it?" Opal said thoughtfully, and she walked away toward the tree line. Bolin watched her go, but didn't follow. "If you're lavabending that must mean you're feeling better, right?"

            Bolin shrugged even though he knew Opal wouldn't see it. "I'm not passing out anymore. Or throwing up. Or... You know, generally dying."

            Again, he regretted the words. His mouth kept moving without the full backing of his brain, and that wasn't a problem he'd ever really had to deal with. Opal was flustering him, and it wasn't doing good things for his conversationalism.

            But Opal didn't seem to mind. Bolin wasn't even sure that Opal heard him, because she was standing beside the tree he'd destroyed, examining the charred bark and touching the obsidian shards. She tried to wiggle one out of its hole, but it wouldn't budge.

            "What did you _do_?" Opal asked. Bolin couldn't be sure if she sounded impressed or intimidated.

            "Well, it's hard to explain," Bolin said. He joined her at the tree, grabbed the shard she'd been wiggling, and yanked it as hard as he could out of the wood. No wonder she'd been having such a hard time; it'd been buried a solid three inches. "Wow," Bolin gaped.

            "Again, what did you do?"

            "I lavabent."

            Bolin could feel Opal's skepticism and knew the look she must be wearing. She'd given him that look a million times, especially when he said something stupid. He'd long since stopped taking offense at it.

            "How did you lavabend at a tree without catching it on fire?" she asked flatly. "Because lava is hot, and trees are flammable."

            By now, Bolin had started scrutinizing the hole he'd left, poking into it with his finger and feeling the ashen bark surrounding it. The razor-sharp rock had made a clean impact, had cut through the tree like a knife, and while its exterior had gone all crumbly, the interior seemed to have hardened as though a thin layer of rock remained embedded inside.

            He supposed it made sense. The single time he'd burnt himself something similar had happened: A tiny, rogue drop of lava had fallen on his calf, and it hadn't even hurt until after it had cooled. In fact, it had felt numb and strange at first, like he'd been hit by a raindrop. It cooled almost immediately, leaving a thick, ugly scab of rock on his skin. Bolin grimaced to think about it. After a few minutes of blind panic, he'd pulled the cooled rock away, taking a hefty chunk of skin along with it, and between the actual wound and the burn that radiated around it, the pain kept him off his feet for a couple of days after. He still had the scar, and it was fairly large and definitively ugly.

            Bolin thought again about the dreams he'd been having, and he thought about his leg, and he thought about the tree, and he swallowed hard. Lavabending was dangerous. He'd known that all along, but he'd never stopped to consider what it might feel like to be engulfed by the stuff like the people in his dream had been. He wondered if they would even feel it, the people who were buried. Or would it be initially numb like his leg had been? He supposed it wouldn't matter. If he submerged someone in lava, they wouldn't have to worry about the pain for too long.

            The thought made his stomach jerk.

            "Are you all right?"

            Bolin snapped to attention. He'd almost forgotten that Opal was even there, and he hated himself for that. As much as he'd poked fun of himself pre-collapse, he'd never had so much trouble thinking before. Now it seemed to take every ounce of his focus. He offered her the most genuine smile he could muster and said, "Yeah, just surprised."

            "Are you sure that's all?" Opal asked. She sounded concerned.

            "I'm sure," Bolin replied as confidently as he could. Then he turned back to the tree and rubbed his fingers over the bark again. "It just takes a lot of effort for me to think sometimes, and I zone out."

            "It's okay," Opal said. He could hear the smile in her voice again. "I still love you, even if you're slow."

            "That's good," Bolin replied dryly, "because I'm plenty slow." And then, to cover the fact that he'd been being a little too self-depreciating, he shot Opal a half-grin that he hoped would placate her. "So, how'd your trip go? You get anything figured out?"

            It was Opal's turn to look distracted now, and she reached out to poke at the obsidian shards while she thought. When she spoke, she did it slowly. "Now, I don't want you to get upset," she began, and Bolin knew that if those were her first words he wouldn't like what she said, "but we might've gotten into a little bit of a bind."

            Bolin's brow raised of its own accord, and he leaned casually against an adjacent tree. "A bit of a bind? What's that supposed to mean?"

            "Oh, the whole place blew up."

            Bolin just stared at her for a minute, uncertain at first that he'd heard her correctly. She'd made the statement so bluntly, and she'd never stopped touching the obsidian. "Did...Did I hear you right?" he asked. When she didn't answer right away he added, a little distressed, "Opal?"

            "Oh, you heard right," she said, and again she looked to Bolin with an impish grin. "It blew up."

            "And...Okay..."

            "It's nothing you need to worry about," she said. She pecked him on the cheek. "And I'm not just saying that. We got in, we got information, and we got out safe. The place was abandoned. Everyone is fine. Asami and Korra are in the guest rooms right now. Things just got exciting for a few minutes."

            "Exciting, yeah. Sounds really exciting."

            "Not as exciting as tonight will be."

            Again, Bolin was dumbfounded. Then he caught on. "See, you're changing the subject now."

            "Do you really mind, though?" she asked. Again, she poked him in the chest and drew her finger down, stopping lower this time. How could he say no to that? How could he say anything at all? Opal seemed to have caught on to his inability to respond. "I didn't think so."

            "You're dirty."

            Another coy smile.

            "Well," Opal said, "I should go get cleaned up and changed, I haven't had a shower in... Well, too long, and I can't have you thinking I smell bad. Or that I look bad. Why don't you plan to meet me in my room after dinner tonight, and we can catch up on things."

            "Yes ma'am."

            "That's what I thought." She kissed him again, and when she pulled back this time Bolin felt distinctly hot. He tugged at his collar, and Opal stepped away with an appraising eye on him. "Don't wear yourself out, okay?"

            "Yes ma'am."

            Opal practically skipped as she left. Bolin admired her as she disappeared out of sight, and then he slumped with an enormous sigh to the ground. No matter how long they'd been together, he still couldn't believe he'd landed someone like her. He couldn't fathom that she loved him as genuinely as he loved her. It had always been too good to be true, and he was going to hold on to her no matter what happened.

            Mindful of his later date, Bolin didn't do much bending in the time remaining to him before _second lunch_. He practiced generating lava for fifteen minutes, then worked on lava whips for ten minutes, then he tried three more times to harden the lava into shards as he'd done the night before with middling amounts of luck. The first time he'd failed completely, the second time he'd hardened it into one giant lump of smoldering rock that impacted the tree and shattered--he'd worried that it was going to catch the grass on fire--and the third time the lava hardened and separated, but it didn't fly nearly far enough or fast enough to connect as it had done before, and when he examined the shards their tips hadn't been half as sharp as the one he’d pulled from the tree.

            He'd have to keep practicing, he thought. But not now. Not when Opal was waiting for him.

            Bolin collected Pabu and entered the dining room at ten to three significantly happier than he'd entered that morning, and not even the apprehension he harbored about trying his hand at solid foods could spoil his spirits. Besides, nobody was in the room: If he puked, nobody would be any the wiser, at least until the chef told Su.

            At precisely three o'clock a bowl of steaming seaweed noodles sat before him, and Bolin spent entirely too long just looking at it. It looked exactly like Narook's recipe, but when he pushed it around in the bowl he noted, much to his delight, that there was real meat in there, which Narook's had never been able to boast.

            Bolin ate slowly and quietly, and he thoroughly enjoyed himself. The noodles were every bit as good as Narook's, if not better, and all his anxiety about eating them had disappeared by the time they were gone. He sat there for a while after the chef cleared away his dishes, then, feeling full and content, he went back to his clearing, laid on the ground, and stared up.

            Today was a good day, he thought, and it was only going to get better. He'd made progress in every way he could think of, he'd been pushing himself hard to make certain of that, and tonight would be the reward for all his effort.

            He rubbed at his stomach for a few seconds, draped his arm over his face, and closed his eyes to listen to the earth. But between the comfortable weight of a legitimate meal and the warmth of the sun peeking through the clouds, he fell asleep until Pabu started nibbling at his ear.

            Things didn't feel quite as pleasant as they had when he'd dozed off. The warm afternoon had gone cold, or at least Bolin felt cold, and he felt mildly uncomfortable besides. He sat, figuring it would make him feel better, but it didn't make him feel better at all.

            The simple act of sitting made him dizzy. And the cold wasn't from the evening setting in, it was from the sheen of sweat covering his face and neck. The discomfort hadn't come from sleeping on the ground; it wasn't a stiff back or a sore muscle. It had come from the food. Bolin knew the feeling.

            Pabu nosed him in the arm, and Bolin swatted him gently away. Pabu nuzzled at him again, and with every intent of scolding Pabu and pushing him away, Bolin shifted. He didn't get the words out. He didn't even catch the breath he would've used to say them. The nausea overwhelmed him, and it was too late. He pounded his closed fist against the ground, rent a hole in the earth, and retched into it. And where last time it had taken one enormous heave to be rid of the horrible feeling, it now took four, complete with many more horrible, painfully dry heaves in between.

            When he'd finished, Bolin hardly had the strength to hold himself up, and he regretted eating at all. It had been an ambitious lunch and he'd known that going in, but he'd decided on it with this very scenario in mind. Noodles were far more pleasant to throw up than steam buns or fried tofu or anything particularly fibrous, but it still hadn't been nice.

            He sat there for a while, staring into his disgusting hole, waiting for round two and trying to discern if he was going to faint. But round two didn't come and he didn't faint, and with effort Bolin closed the earth over his mess, struggled to his feet, and lumbered defeated back to his room. There was no way he'd entertain Opal now, but maybe she'd be satisfied just lazing around together. It wouldn't be the first time she'd had to settle, and he doubted it'd be the last.

            By the time he'd gotten back to his room most of the nausea had gone even if his limbs remained heavy and his head light. He collected his things and shuffled to the bath, where he sat on the floor in the shower for twenty minutes before figuring that it'd be best to actively bathe, particularly if he had any plans of sleeping beside a girl.

            Cleaning up calmed him down a little, and it eased some of his soreness, but Bolin still felt tired. So, he went back to his room, dropped onto the bed, pulled his pillow over his face, and closed his eyes again. All he wanted to do was sleep, but the discomfort in his head and his body wouldn't allow him to doze. He just laid there for hours, holding Pabu close to his chest and willing himself to feel better. It didn't work, and when the door to his room opened, every bit of the anticipation he'd been feeling earlier that day was gone.

            Bolin wasn't sure he cared who had come in, but when Pabu jumped up and chattered happily, he lifted the pillow. It was Opal, and she looked a little tense.

            "Did I miss our date?" Bolin asked. He sounded sick again, and he hoped that Opal would hear it and forgive him. "I got sick."

            "No," she said tersely, "you didn't miss anything."

            Bolin sat. Then he held his head while the room stopped spinning. "Did you want to change the plan? Sleep in here?"

            "No.” She paused.” Hello, Pabu." Opal patted Pabu on the head, but then lifted him from her shoulder and tossed him gently back on the bed. Then she walked across the room, pushed the drape aside, and gazed out the window.

            She was acting weird.

            "Are you okay?"

            Opal didn't say anything. Bolin didn't know if the feeling in his stomach was a nervous flutter or another bout of nausea.

            "Opal?"

            She kept quiet, so Bolin changed tack.

            "What time is it?" he asked.

            "Past dinnertime," Opal said. "Mom wasn't happy that you didn't show up."

            "Well, I got sick, I already said that. She wanted me to eat, so I ate and it didn't stay down."

            Opal made a humming noise like she was humoring him, then she took a deep breath, relaxed her posture, and turned around with a perfectly neutral expression, as if her tenseness upon entering the room had been only momentary.

            "Um," Bolin stammered, startled by the abrupt shift. "Is everything okay? Is it... You know... _That time_? I can go get you some dessert and we can--"

            "No, it's not," Opal replied. She'd interrupted him, but there was no anger in her tone.

            "I didn't think it was," Bolin said lamely. He was utterly confused. If it wasn't _that time_ , what could it be?

            "So, I was talking with Asami," Opal said casually, and she peeked back out the window. Bolin wondered why she was keeping her distance. "You know, girl stuff. We wanted to know: What do you think about Korra?"

            "You mean, like...?"

            "Oh, just in general."

            The truth clicked at once. She and Asami must have been talking dating and romance and other mushy stuff like that. What other girl stuff could there be? Again, _that time_ came to mind, but Bolin wasn't sure why anyone would want to discuss that at length. At a loss, he shrugged.

            "Well, she's the Avatar," he started. He felt stupid at once. What a dumb way to say something. "You know, can we talk about this later? My head really isn't--"

            "I'd like to talk now," Opal said, and she kept the casual tone. "What do you think of Korra?"

            Bolin rubbed at his forehead with both hands and closed his eyes. "Well, she's great," he said lamely. "She's a good person and she's a heck of a bender, and I mean, we get along well. I don't get where you're going with this."

            "Do you think she's pretty?"

            Opal was looking out the window again. Bolin couldn't get a read on her, and with his feet on the bed he couldn't feel her either. He wasn't sure what to think. She still sounded perfectly normal.

            "Well? Do you?"

            He shrugged. "Well, yeah, I suppose so."

            "Prettier than me?"

            "No!" Bolin cried. Clearly it had been one of those questions for which there was no correct answer, something akin to her asking if her dress looked good. "No way!"

            That humoring noise again.

            "Opal, what's the matter?" Bolin asked. He dropped his head into his hands. It was pounding and he felt like he might throw up. All he'd wanted to do was sleep. "I love you, but you're doing that thing girls do where they seem mad, but then when the guy asks what's wrong they pull out the _nothing, I'm fine_ card when they're really not fine at all. So, what's the matter?"

            "Do you love her?"

            Bolin looked up, stupefied. "Of course I do," he said bluntly. "We've been friends for years, if anything happened--"

            He shut up when Opal rounded on him. She looked like she was ready to explode. Her eyes had narrowed dangerously, and a redness had come to her face that wasn't borne of embarrassment or flattery. Bolin had never seen her in such a suddenly towering temper. It was terrifying.

            "Opal?"

            "I knew it!" she cried, and Bolin reeled. "I knew it! I _knew it!_ "

            "You knew what?" he asked. He was so confused.

            "You and Korra!"

            "Me and Korra what?"

            For a second, it looked like Opal was holding her breath. It looked like she was shaking, and Bolin's first instinct was to go hug her. But when he dropped his legs over the side of the bed and his bare feet hit the floor, he knew better than to move. She was raging more seriously than Korra had done when he'd fainted on Asami. She was raging more seriously than he'd ever seen her rage before, even in the days he'd worked for Kuvira.

            "Opal," Bolin pleaded, "what's going on?"

            "You know _exactly_ what's going on!" she shouted. "Don't play stupid! You know exactly what you did!"

            "No, I don't," Bolin said. Opal swelled with anger, and he didn't know what to do. He wanted to reason with her, but he was beginning to feel agitated. He wasn't ready to fight with her, not now, not with the headache and the sick feeling quickly coming back to his stomach. "Why don't you stop yelling at me and come sit down." 

            "I can't believe you!" Opal cried. "After everything, I can't believe you'd..."

            "You can't believe I'd what? Opal, come on. I don't want to play guessing games with you right now. I don't feel good. Can you please just tell me what's wrong?"

            "You've been seeing Korra!"

            Opal had practically screamed the words, and as she did it seemed that tears had come to her eyes. But all Bolin could do was stare dumbfounded. His confusion deepened. How could he have seen Korra? He'd been in Zaofu, and she'd been halfway across the world with Opal. 

            "I haven't seen Korra for a week. You know that."

            "And that must have been _terrible_ for you!"

            "I mean, it wasn't exactly a pleasant week, but..."

            Opal broke. She stood there by the window and cried with her head in her hands, but Bolin dared not approach. She still felt incomprehensibly angry. She still felt scary.

            "Opal?"

            "You're a horrible person!" Opal shouted through the tears. She didn't even look at him. "A horrible, horrible person! And... And I... I slept with you! I can't believe you'd do that to me! And now you won't even admit it! I caught you, and you won't admit it!"

            Bolin sat quietly and listened to her cry. His patience was running very short now, but he didn't want to get angry with her. If she was having one of those irrational _girl moments,_ he didn't want to hold it against her. She'd had a busy week, she'd had a frightening week, and it seemed only reasonable that she'd be a little tense.

            But she wasn't just tense. She was insane.

            "Opal," he said with carefully measured calm, "what am I supposed to be admitting to?"

            Opal stared at the floor, her fists clenched and her shoulders high. She looked like she was going to strike out at him. "I can't believe you," she growled. "I can't believe you're lying to me right now. You've been lying to me the whole time."

            He wasn't even sure if he should bother asking her to explain what he'd been lying about.

            "All that time you spent together, how weird she was around you, especially when I was there, too. It all makes sense, Bolin. It all makes sense, and you need to come clean!" Opal's voice broke. She didn't wait for Bolin to ask what he was supposed to be coming clean about. "I hope it was worth it! I hope she was everything you wanted and more!"

            "What the heck are you talking about?"

            "I know everything!" Opal screamed. "Korra admitted it! She confessed _everything!_ I _know_ , Bolin! I _know_ what you two have been doing! And behind my back? Behind Asami's back? Telling us both that you were _training?_ Some kind of training it was, huh? I don't see you for what, two weeks, and you're letting it out for every girl on the block!"

            Bolin blinked dumbly. There was no way. "Opal," he said in the same calm, measured tone, "are you trying to say that Korra and I... Uh... That we... _Did the thing?_ "

            She burst into hysterical tears. It was all the answer Bolin needed, and it took all his effort not to laugh in Opal's face. It was absurd. It was her hormones. It had to be.

            "Opal, this is ridiculous," Bolin said, but he shut up quickly when she leveled her glare on him. It was a serious glare. No way she was kidding. "Opal," Bolin started again, "can you please explain to me..."

            "Korra said point blank that _you said_ that you loved her! You said it as plain as day while you were in the hospital. And you kissed her... _Three times!_ And you touched her _everywhere_ and then you two start sneaking away on Air Temple Island to goodness knows where for hours and hours, and she starts acting all nervous around me, and all nervous around you, and it's like she didn't even want us to be in the same room together! I can't believe I didn't see it earlier! I can't believe I was so stupid! You've _always_ had feelings for her, haven't you? I know that! We've talked about it!"

            Bolin couldn't speak. It felt like his head was going to explode, and a terrified lump came into his throat that he couldn't get rid of. He and Opal _had_ talked about Korra before in a perfectly casual way, but that had been years ago, right when he and Opal had first started dating and were getting to know each other better. It had been a completely innocent conversation that hadn't focused on Bolin's latent feelings. He'd been talking about his relationship with _Mako_ , talking about how every once in a while, his brother could be the biggest jerk on the face of the planet. Any mention of Korra had been completely incidental.

            Opal sobbed.

            "I... I need to make sure I'm understanding this," Bolin said weakly. He dropped his head into his hand and closed his eyes against the throbbing. He couldn't help the dry tone that came to him. He was getting very tired of this stupidity very quickly. "You think that Korra and I are having some kind of _relationship_ that started when I was brain dead in the hospital, when I couldn't so much as talk or walk or think _at all_ , and that I've been covering it up by lying to you about training with her? Am... Am I getting this right?"

            "And it's even worse!" Opal cried. "It's even worse now, because you're using your accident to cover it up! You're pretending you don't know about it!"

            Bolin felt himself tense up.

            "You're pretending you don't know! You're pretending you don't remember because you got hit in the head and, _oh no, I've lost my memory!_ "

            That had crossed the line. She was openly mocking him, and the anger had begun to build in earnest. He was desperate to understand. "I _don't_ know about it!" he yelled. "I don't remember anything! You know that!"

            "Sure you don't, Bolin! Sure you don't!"

            "I don't! Opal, we _were_ training! She was teaching me how to waterbend! I kept having these dreams and then I got scared and..."

            "I can't believe you're still lying to me, and such a stupid, ridiculous lie, too. Waterbending? You expect me to believe that? You’re an _earthbender_ , Bolin. Stop lying to me.."

            "I'm _not lying!_ " Bolin cried. "I'm not lying at all!"

            "Then how do you explain what Korra said? How do you explain it, Bolin?"

            "What, that I told her I loved her?" he said incredulously. "Opal, how many stories have you told me about the stupid, ridiculous things I said while I was laid up? And you _laughed_ at me about them! You _laughed at me_ , Opal! And now you're taking them _seriously_? Who cares what I said to Korra, I was _completely brain dead_!"

            "You must _still_ be brain dead!"

            Bolin clenched his jaw to keep from blowing up. She was taking cheap shots now. She was flat out insulting him. He drew a shaking breath and stared at the floor. "Opal, in the nicest way possible, you _can't_ hold me responsible for what I said at any point between when I was attacked and when I was released to Air Temple Island. You _know_ that. You know I didn't know what I was saying to _anyone_ and you know that I don't remember any of it. We've been over this before. You thought it was funny!"

            "Well it's not funny anymore, Bolin. It's not funny at all! And now you're using it as an excuse! You're using it as a cover! That's low, Bolin, that's really low. I was worried about you! I was terrified! And the whole time you were eyeing Korra and... I can't believe you!"

            "What do I need to do to convince you I'm being honest here?"

            She shook her head at him, but she was looking at the floor. Her posture was still all tense. She still looked like she was shaking. "There's nothing you can do. We're past that point now, Bolin. I can't believe I ever loved you. I don't want to talk to you anymore.  I don't even want to look at you."

            "We _have_ to talk, Opal!"

            "Maybe you ought to go talk to your _other girlfriend!_ "

            She burst into fresh tears and stood there wailing hysterically for a time that, to Bolin, seemed forever. He didn't know what to say anymore. He was too confused, he didn't feel well, and he was tired on top of it all. He wasn't ready for this kind of drama. He wasn't ready to defend himself from this kind of unbelievable accusation, especially when Opal clearly wasn't seeing reason. He didn't know what to do, but the sick feeling in his stomach had grown. His whole body felt incredibly heavy but full of energy again. Was it panic? Was he going to panic again?

            "Opal, please," Bolin begged, "come sit down and let's talk about this like adults, okay?"

            "Don't patronize me! Don't insult me!"

            "I'm pretty sure you're the one who was insulting me first," Bolin snapped, unable to hold it in, "what with the mocking me and calling me brain dead and accusing me of cheating on you. Yeah, that was _real_ tactful. And now you won't even listen to me defend myself! What am I supposed to do, Opal? How am I supposed to win here? You won't listen to a word I say!"

            Opal shook her head and clutched her fists to her eyes. "I never should have listened to you! I hate you! I _hate you_!"

            Of all the things she had already said and all the words she could have possibly decided on at that point, those were the three words Bolin had feared the most. They sucked the anger out of him totally, they hit him like a freight train and drew him to his feet. He had to do something. This was serious. She was serious. He had to convince her.

            "Opal," he begged quietly. "I didn't mean to yell at you. Please, let's talk about this."

            "There's nothing to talk about anymore!"

            "Please, come on. You can't do this to me right now."

            " _I_ can't do this to _you?_ " Opal cried. Her voice was shrill now, so high pitched that Bolin couldn't believe she was even still speaking. "I can't do this to you? What about what you did to me?"

            "I didn't _do_ anything!"

            Every word he'd chosen seemed to have been the wrong one. Opal bristled for a moment like she was going to yell at him all over again. Instead of screaming, she balled her fists up and stormed toward the door.

            "Opal!"

            "Don't talk to me!" she cried as she walked. "Don't you ever talk to me again!"

            Bolin rushed to intercept her. He couldn't let her leave, not like this. They had to figure this out. _He_ had to figure this out, and there was no way his brain was going to work it out on its own, not now that she'd thrown all of this in his face. He couldn't let her go. He didn't know how he knew it, but he understood that if Opal left now, she'd never come back.

            "Opal!" Desperately, he caught her by the wrist. "Please!"

            It happened before he ever realized it. He hadn't seen it coming. In a million years, he'd never have seen it coming.

            She slapped him. And she hadn't just _slapped_ him, she'd jerked her arm away, rounded, and struck him backhand with the full force of her body. She'd connected so hard that he stumbled and reeled, dizzy and grasping dumbly at his face. He didn't understand. He _couldn't_ understand. All he knew was that his face hurt terribly and that he could suddenly taste blood.

            The door slammed.

            For a long time, Bolin stood there, struggling to keep his feet against the dizziness. He felt sick, and he wasn't sure if it was because he'd thrown up earlier or because of the splitting headache or because he'd just gotten done yelling at the top of his voice or because Opal had knocked the sense out of him. He couldn't think. All he could do was touch his cheek, look at his fingers, touch his cheek again, look at his fingers again. There was blood. She must have hit him where Pabu had scratched him. But why was he tasting it, too? Had she really hit him that hard?

            Had she really hit him?

            Bolin staggered to the bed and sat. He stared at the floor and held his face and felt his eyes getting hot and all the blood rushing to his ears and his neck again. He knew it wasn't out of embarrassment this time. It was sadness, and it was fear, and it was disbelief that she would have the nerve to accuse him of something so serious and then ignore him when he tried to stand up for himself.

            What had he done to deserve this? He was supposed to be in her room right now. He was supposed to be in her bed. They were supposed to be having fun. They were supposed to be madly in love. They were supposed to be spending every moment of every day together for the rest of their lives. What had he done to deserve this? What could he possibly have done?

            Something clicked somewhere in the back of Bolin's head. Something snapped, and before he could think to stop himself he was on his feet and out the door, marching purposefully toward the guest rooms.

            This was Korra's fault. It was all Korra's fault. Everything that ever went wrong always seemed to be her fault, and now it wasn't a matter of people thinking he was depressed and suicidal. He didn't care about that anymore. He could handle that. Now it was a matter of people thinking he was a deceptive liar and a shameless cheat, and that was something he simply couldn't accept. At least if they thought he was depressed they might try to help him. But if they thought he was a cheater, they would abandon him, and then he would lose everything.

            He'd already lost everything.

            By the time Bolin reached the hallway that housed the guest rooms, the fiery rage had gone cold. His whole body felt like it had iced over, like it had gone numb, and Bolin knew before he ever put his hand on the doorknob that whatever came out of his mouth wasn’t going to be pleasant. In a different scenario, he might've tried to temper the anger, he might've tried to push it down or dull it or wait for it to go away, but Korra had endangered the single most important relationship he'd ever kindled, and that was unforgivable. Never mind what her lying did to his reputation, never mind what it did to the friendship they shared: All of that could burn if it meant he'd have Opal back.

            He didn't even stop for a breath before throwing open the door to Korra's room, the room she'd occupied every time she had stayed in Zaofu. He didn't pause to collect himself or steel his nerves or anything. He went in ready to unload.

            Korra was sitting curled on her bed, and she didn't look up when the door opened. Seeing her sitting there so impassive only made matters worse. Seeing her sitting there ignited the heat in his middle, and Bolin stood seething at her while his insides boiled. His face had grown suddenly unbearably hot again, and his cheek stung fiercely where Opal had hit him. His hands, clenched into fists, were clammy and sweaty and shaking. Had he stopped for half a second to evaluate the situation, he might've seen that she was quaking just as hard as he was, but his rage had blinded him again. His anger had driven any hope for rationality out of his brain the same as it had last time.

            "What did you say to my girlfriend?" Bolin roared as he stormed into the room. He slammed the door behind him, and though Korra jumped and cowered at the enormous noise, she didn't raise her head. "What did you tell her? Korra! What did you tell her?"

            Korra made a sound that could have been words but came out the tiniest squeak. It only made Bolin angrier. He wanted to move toward the bed, he wanted to shake Korra and wake her up from whatever weird daze she was in, but he stayed rooted to the spot just inside the door. He knew if he approached her, he wouldn't be the only one with a bruised face.

            Instead, he kept yelling. "What did you say to Opal? I'm not leaving until you tell me!"

            "I didn't say anything to Opal!" Korra cried. Her voice was muffled, but Bolin could hear its thickness, its shrillness. She sounded afraid, and that made him glad. Maybe she'd tell the truth. Maybe she'd talk some sense.

            "That's a lie!" Bolin roared. "What did you tell her?"

            Korra raised her head a fraction of an inch and looked at Bolin out of the corner of her very red, very puffy eye. "I didn't talk to Opal at all," she whimpered. Then the eye Bolin could see went wide, and she raised her head higher, her brow knit with concern. "What happened to your face?"

            "What happened to my _face_?" Bolin yelled, uncontrolled. His voice cracked, but that didn't stop him. "You mean _this?_ " He pointed at the spot where Opal had hit him, which still stung and had begun throbbing angrily. "That was my gentle, loving girlfriend! Now what did you tell her?"

            "Did she hit you?"

            "What did you tell her, Korra?"

            "I didn't tell her anything, I swear!" Korra cried, and she was indeed beginning to cry now. "I haven't talked to Opal since dinner!"

            Bolin clenched his jaw and glared at her as hard as he could. His whole body shook with stress and rage, and he felt for the slightest moment that he might lose control again. And for the first time, he didn't care. He wanted the truth. He wanted to know. He _needed_ to know, and he didn't care how he found out. "Then what did you do?"

            He'd growled the words all low and threatening again, with a dangerous emphasis on every single syllable, and it made Korra drive her forehead back into her hands and sob. And the longer she sat there heaving with sobs, the angrier Bolin got, until he couldn't keep himself still anymore and threw his arms up in disbelief. With a great cry of frustration, he started pacing: It was the only thing he could do that would keep him away from Korra and away from the possibility of smacking her harder than Opal had smacked him.

            "Amazing," Bolin said to no one in particular, "absolutely amazing. Opal gets mad at me for something _you_ said, she _backhands_ me, and then she walks out! And now you won't even fess up. It's amazing!"

            "I don't want you to be mad at me!" Korra sobbed, and Bolin stopped dead in his tracks to stare at her with a disbelieving look he knew she'd never see. She kept crying. "I don't want you to hate me!"

            "Oh, we crossed that road a long time ago, Korra," Bolin said. He couldn't keep the anger and sarcasm and hate out of his voice now. He didn't even bother to try. "We crossed that road several _weeks_ ago, you remember? The day I went with you to question the jerk that tried to kill me because _you_ thought I could handle it? Yeah? And then when I _couldn't_ handle it you told Asami and Lin that I'd been starving myself for two weeks and was trying to _kill myself_ and they locked me up like a complete _psycho?_ Does _that_ ring a bell for you?"

            Korra just kept sobbing, and Bolin kept watching her, waiting for her to say something. And the longer he waited the more the anger built in him, so that when Korra finally whimpered a desperate, "Bo, please," he snapped entirely.

            "Don't you _dare_ call me that!" He shouted. "You don't _get_ to call me that! You know who gets to call me that, Korra? My _friends_. My _brother_ and my _friends_ , and you're neither one of those! You're just a spoiled brat who had her whole life handed to her on a stupid shiny platter and never had to work for anything! Everyone loves you, Korra, because you're the _Avatar_ , and I guess to you that means that you're better than everyone else!" He paused, and the laugh that came out of him sounded so deadly that it made his own blood run cold. "And every relationship you’ve ever had has been so fake because of it," he continued, an icy sharp edge to his suddenly quiet voice. "Every person you've ever met has only stayed by you because you're the Avatar, not because you're a good person. You're a horrible person. You're selfish and cruel and... And... You're... You're awful, Korra! You see someone doing better than you are and you've got to rip it apart! You see something you want and you take it and it doesn't matter to you who gets hurt along the way!"

            "Bolin, please! Stop! I'm sorry!"

            He laughed again. He couldn't do anything else. He couldn't _think_ to do anything else. The volume came back as he raged. "And what are you sorry for, _Avatar Korra?_ Huh? You didn't do anything wrong, right? It's all someone else's fault, right?"

            She shook her head, and Bolin stopped pacing to watch her. Her back heaved as she drew frantic, horrified breaths. "It's my fault!" she cried. "I was curious! I was scared! I was confused!"

            Bolin shook his head, dumbfounded. "What could you possibly have been _confused_ about, Korra? What could've scared you so badly that you'd tell Opal that you and I had..." he couldn't say the words, so he shook his head again and looked at the floor. The anger had gotten so big inside him that he wanted to cry again. He wanted to burst. He dropped his head in his hands and leaned against the wall. All he could think about was how badly his face hurt because Opal had hit him and that she was never going to speak to him again for something he hadn't even done.

            "I didn't tell Opal anything!" Korra insisted. "I told _Asami!_ I told Asami because I didn't know what to do! I was too afraid to talk to you about it so I asked Asami for help and it blew up in my face!"

            "Well, it blew up in mine, too, so thanks for that," Bolin said, and to his surprise the anger seemed to have gone out of him. His voice was flat now, devoid of anything at all. He wondered if it was because he was trying so hard not to cry, or if it was because there was too much inside him for any one thing to come out over another. It only seemed to frighten Korra more how the quality of his voice had shifted so abruptly.  "And I'm... I don't even know how I feel about you right now, besides stupidly angry and hateful, and..." He laughed again, and when he spoke again his voice was thick and sarcastic and cruel. "And it's _great_ to see you back safe from your trip, by the way! I'm _so_ glad you showed up here to rip what was left of my stupid life apart. Clearly you didn't do enough of that in Republic City."

            They stayed silent for a long time. Bolin couldn't think straight enough to come up with words to express everything in his head, and Korra just kept crying, but eventually she seemed to tire. She sat there quietly, occasionally sniffling. Bolin didn't even want to look at her.

            "I told Asami the truth," Korra said at last, and some strength had come back to her. "I told her the truth, and that's why it's so hard."

            "Well, you'd better tell me, too, so I can try to figure out how to clean up after you." Bolin wanted to sound mad. He'd wanted to sound angry enough to scare her and hurt her and convey how much he hated her, but he'd gone weak. He’d been sick only hours ago. He hadn’t been ready for the drama. He wanted to throw up again, and his head was throbbing. His eyes hurt.  He’d skipped meals again, He’d been mercilessly overworking himself. He had nothing left. "Just... Just tell me."

            "You kissed me."

            Bolin bristled. "No, I didn't."

            "You did!"

            He chewed on his bottom lip for a few seconds, clenched his jaw, and crossed his arms over his chest to keep himself from working his hands into fists. "Korra," he said, and now he tried to keep his voice even. If he didn't try he'd start crying. "You know as much as I do that you and I have _never_ done _anything_ even remotely romantic together. Not that I haven't tried," he interrupted himself with another sick sounding laugh. "I tried. I tried so much, and you just... You rejected me over and over and over, and you didn't even care. You didn't ever feel bad about it. You _made fun of me_ about it _to my face_. But I can take a hint, Korra. I took that hint a long time ago. I gave up. And now you're sitting here trying to tell me that..."

            He shook his head. If he finished the statement he'd break down, and he couldn't do that again. Not now. Not in front of Korra. She had to know how mad he was.

            "I'm not lying!" Korra cried, and in her desperation, she sat straight, she pushed herself to the edge of the bed and stared at him pleadingly. "I'm telling the truth!"

            "I don't believe you."

            Korra stood, but Bolin didn't look at her. He couldn't look at her. Now that he’d planted his feet on the floor, he could feel her, and for the first time since he'd started recognizing the strange sensations in the earth, he couldn't figure out what the feeling was. She was a mess, too much of a mess for him to read her. So, he watched her, confused himself. He watched the emotions on her face shift from sadness to horror to nervousness to something he couldn't ever hope to put his finger on, and he hated her the whole time.

            "I'm so sorry," she said, and Bolin knew it was a genuine apology. "I'm so, so sorry."

            "Tell me. Right now. You tell me _everything_ and you give it to me straight. You so much as twitch the wrong way and I'm gone and you'll never have the chance to fix this."

            "The night you were attacked," Korra said quietly, "I stayed with you. The combustion bender came back and you knocked him out and we were afraid that someone else was going to come try to hurt you. So, while Tenzin got the White Lotus and Lin got the metalbenders, I stayed with you to protect you."

            Bolin's brow went up. "Wonderful job you did there," he said, the sarcasm dripping.

            "And you just... You didn't move and you didn't make any noise and I was scared. I was really scared, because I'd never seen you like that before."

            "I don't make a habit of having buildings fall on me."

            "I'm being serious!"

            "So am I."

            Korra looked genuinely hurt by the deadness in his voice, but he didn't care. "Bolin, please."

            "Stop begging me and just spit it out already."

            Korra looked down and started wringing her hands. "I'd ask you not to get upset but we're clearly past that," she said sheepishly. "So... So just listen... Okay?"

            Bolin hoped the look he gave her made it obvious how ridiculous she sounded, but she didn't see it.

            "I stayed with you," she said in the same small voice. "All night. And I stayed awake as long as I could and watched you, because what else was I supposed to do besides make sure you didn't just up and die? Well, you didn't, obviously. You didn't do anything. And I got tired, and I figured that since we'd shared a bed before and you were unconscious that it wouldn't matter if I fell asleep."

            "Nice assumption," Bolin jeered. "Let's never make it again."

            Korra squinted her eyes closed. She looked ready to cry again. "I fell asleep beside you, and then when I woke up again you had your arm around me and your hand was on my stomach and you were..." She swallowed very hard. Bolin could feel her nerves, but they weren't nerves borne of fear, they were something else. They were unlike anything he'd felt out of her before. "You were touching me," Korra continued with an enormous breath, "and I'd never been touched like that and it scared me, so I tried to roll over and wake you up but you... I don't even know. You thought I was Opal. And you kept apologizing to Opal for...       I don't even remember what it was, you just kept saying you were sorry, and then you kissed me because you thought I was Opal."

            It was the dream. He'd had the dream and Korra was describing it. The recollection sucked the anger out of Bolin again, and he slumped heavily, all the strength gone from his legs, so that the wall was the only thing holding him up. How could she possibly know about it?

            "And then you woke up," Korra continued, apparently oblivious to Bolin's sudden weakness. "And you recognized that I wasn't Opal but you... You weren't yourself, Bolin, and you kept touching me all over the place and you didn't... I mean, you recognized me but you didn't seem to recognize me, and it was horrible!"

            "I'm sure it was," he said, and again his voice betrayed him. He'd wanted the words to come out all hard and sarcastic, but they didn't. His words sounded as weak as he felt.

            "And we just laid there for a long, long time, and you kept touching me and I kept watching you and waiting for you to wake up."

            "You said I was awake."

            "No! Not like that! You _were_ awake, but you... You didn't have your mind back yet, you didn't seem to know what was going on at all, and I was waiting for you to... To come back..."

            She trailed off, and Bolin motioned for her to keep going.

            "After a long time, you just stopped. You stopped moving and I thought maybe for a minute that you were starting to understand again, but then you looked at me and you said that you weren't going to remember any of what had been going on. Well, that's not true, you _asked_ me if you were going to remember any of it, and I didn't know how to answer you, so I didn't say anything. And then you said since you weren't going to remember any of it that..." she shook her head. Bolin could see the tears coming back into her eyes. She just kept shaking her head, so much that the movement seemed manic. "You kissed me, Bolin. You did. And it was _good_ , and even though it scared me--it scared me a lot--I think I liked it. The more I think about it the more I think I liked it. I don't know how to explain it, Bolin, I really don't, and I'm ashamed of myself. Nobody has _ever_ kissed me like that before. I wasn't expecting it."

            It was getting very hard to breathe now. Bolin stared at the floor. Everything she was saying was perfect. It was a perfect recollection of the dream he'd had. Granted, Korra's story had contained infinitely more detail than his memory of the dream, but it all lined up. It all made sense. And how could she possibly know?

            When Korra continued this time, Bolin could hear the tears in her voice. "And when you finished kissing me you told me that..." she sobbed openly. "You told me that you thought you loved me. At least you thought you did in the past. You said _I think I loved you once, but I don't remember_. That's exactly what you said. Those were the exact words.          Except you sounded so, so sad, and then you kissed me again. And when I started crying you," a huge sob interrupted her, and she breathed hard a few times before attempting to continue. "When I started crying you said that everything would be okay, and that since you wouldn't remember any of it that it would be like a dream, and I told you that I wanted the old Bolin back, and you said you wouldn't remember and then you _didn't_ remember and I've been trying to figure out what to do ever since!"

            Overcome, Korra dropped to the ground, her back against the bed frame, and she wept into her hands. All Bolin could do was watch. It made him feel stupid.

            "Are you being serious?" he asked. "Are you being absolutely serious?"

            She nodded frantically, and then it was Bolin's turn to sag to the ground.

            "And you told Asami."

            She nodded again. "I needed help! I didn't know what to do and it was eating me up inside and--"

            "Korra, that's enough."

            She went quiet except for the crying, and Bolin sat there listening to her and trying to piece everything together. His mind was too frenzied to focus. He couldn't wrap his head around it, but that she was telling the truth was the only thing that made any sense. How else would she have known about the dream? How else would she have been able to recall it so perfectly? How else would she have been able to include so many perfect details? It was like she was in his head, pulling the thoughts straight out of his mind and reciting them like she'd recite a book. And there was nothing in the way she _felt_ that said she was lying. Everything about her was real from the crying to the terror to the worry. It was all real. It was true.

            It was all true.

            It had to be.

            For the second time that day, Bolin laughed uncontrolled, except this time it wasn't a happy laugh. This time it was a hopeless, panicked laugh of disbelief, and he couldn't stop it. It burst out of him all sad and violent. The whole situation was absurd. It was so surreal that Bolin desperately wished that he was still asleep and that everything that had happened over the last few weeks might have been a sick, sadistic dream.

            But his face still hurt, and his heart still hurt, and there was no such pain in his dreams. He was still nauseous and his head was throbbing, and there'd been no such sickness in his dreams.

            He wanted to go back to sleep. The brutal nightmares of lavabending and combustion seemed so much more welcoming than reality. Death itself seemed infinitely preferable to reality, and when Bolin realized that he'd had that thought, his laughter failed and he was left staring at his feet through thick tears that he wanted so badly to hold in. No way _that_ was coming back too, the hating himself. He'd just gotten rid of that. Or he thought he had.

            Opal was right. She'd been right the whole time, and he'd been trying to deny it. But he hadn't remembered. He hadn't realized. He hadn't been in his right mind. How could she hold that against him? He didn't even remember the feeling of it. How could she hate him for something he'd barely been conscious for?

            "Bolin?"

            Korra sounded deeply worried now. Bolin could feel her looking at him. He could feel her sadness giving way to concern.

            "Bolin?"

            "Don't talk to me," he snapped. "Just... Just don't talk to me."

            He wanted to stand up and leave, but where would he go? He wanted to run and find Opal and throw himself at her feet, but he wasn't sure it would do any good. In fact, he knew it wouldn't do any good. Opal had made her feelings crystal clear: She hated him and she didn't want to see him again.

            It was over. And it was all his fault.

            "What am I supposed to do?" he asked. He hadn't meant the words to come out, but they had, and they'd sounded terrible. He sounded sick again. "What am I supposed to do? _What am I supposed to do?_ "

            "Bo?"

            The trembling returned more powerfully than before, and this time it wasn't an angry tremble, it was a panicked tremble. It was a tremble he couldn't control.

            "Bolin?"

            He didn't know when he'd covered his eyes. His mind was blanking again beneath the weight of the truth. Opal hated him and she was completely justified in it, and he didn't know how to make it up to her. How could he ever hope to make it up to her? What could he possibly do to erase what had happened?

            The panic hit full force and drove Bolin thoughtlessly to his feet where he started to pace, his hands on his forehead. His breath had started coming fast and his whole body felt cold with sweat. The trembling intensified. He couldn't control it. It was exactly the same as it had been with Su, except this time he didn't know if he had the strength or desperation to hold it in. No, he knew that he didn't have the strength to hold it in. So, he paced. And then he stopped and tried to shake the panic out of his hands, and then pressed his palms hard into his eyes. He didn't even care that Korra was watching him.

            "What am I supposed to do?"

            "Bolin, I'm sorry."

            He laughed again, but this time he couldn't hold the tears in. "I don't know what to do. What am I supposed to do? What are my options here? Opal hates me for something I apparently _did_ but I don't remember doing! I finally get the chance to kiss you, and I'd think I did a good job at it except for the fact that you're _crying_ about it, but I didn't even get to enjoy it! I'm taking all the punishment and getting none of the reward here, Korra!" He stopped pacing and turned to face her directly. "What am I supposed to do? How is this fair at all? If the love of my life is going to hit me and break up with me because I kissed you, I at least want to know what it felt like!"

            Korra's brows rose, and had Bolin been capable of thinking through his panic he might've felt self-conscious and regretful that the words had come out of his mouth at all. But his mind had jumbled up. Everything had gone all cloudy and confused.

            "And now here you are, all on the floor and crying over me and... But... I didn't even get to enjoy it! I don't remember _any of this!_ But it's got to be true! I _dreamed_ about it! I thought it was a dream, Korra! But it wasn't!"

            He wasn't sure if he expected her to say anything, but he paused in his tirade and stared at her hopefully. She just watched him.

            "Why didn't you tell me?" he begged. "Why, at no point in the last... Month? Has it been that long? Why didn't you _tell me?_ At no point did it ever strike you as a good idea to let me know what I'd done? All of this could've been avoided if you had just _said something!_ "

            And then more truth dropped on him. Now he was thinking about it, everything made sense. Everything he'd believed was just a little bit weird in the days after he'd awakened made perfect sense now that Korra had provided context.

            "That's why you were avoiding me," Bolin said. "That's why you didn't come visit me, isn't it? That's why you were so afraid when I said I wanted to talk to you alone. You thought I was going to say something about it. You were afraid I'd remembered what happened!"

            Korra nodded sheepishly.

            "And when you figured out that I didn't remember you were going to just let it slide, weren't you? You were going to pretend it never happened!"

            She nodded again.

            "Then why, Korra? Why bring it up now? Why didn't you just let it die?"

            Korra shook her head and looked at her hands folded on her knees.

            Bolin laughed again. The anger fought hard against the panic. He couldn't tell which was winning. "I get it. You have feelings for me now, huh? You _want_ me now, is that right? I can't believe you. I can't believe any of this!" He paced another few steps back and forth, and then stopped again, the panic welling up. "It's too late now, Korra. It's too late for any of that! And it's hilarious! You can't possibly understand! I've been trying so hard for the last four and a half years to stop _caring_ about you, Korra. No, I've been trying ever since you... Ever since you and Mako... And I thought I had it down. I thought I was over it, but the truth of the matter is that even if I don't love you--even if I _hate_ you--if the planets magically aligned and Opal wasn't in the picture and you said, _Bolin, take me now_ , I'd absolutely _destroy_ you. I would _demolish_ you, Korra. And I wouldn't think twice about doing it, either! I'd do it in a heartbeat! And I'd _like it_ and you probably would, too!"

            He didn't realize it was possible for eyes to open so wide.

            "But you know what?" Bolin continued, unfazed by Korra's response. "Opal _is_ in the picture. She's the only reason I've been trying! I already told you this, Korra! Opal is the only thing in this whole world that makes me care enough to keep trying to get better! She's the only thing in this whole world that makes me want to _live_ , and you took her away from me! I love her, Korra! I love her more than you could ever possibly imagine! I wanted to spend my whole life with her even though it scared me senseless! I wanted to have kids and maybe actually know what it's like to have a family! I dreamed about that, Korra! I dreamed about that _a lot_! And now she's gone! She's gone and there's no way she's ever going to come back!" Bolin's voice broke and faded, and his eyes dropped to the floor.

            "Bolin, please," Korra pleaded.

            "No," Bolin snapped, his voice weak. "No. You can't make this better. There's nothing you can do to make this better." He couldn't tell if the noise that came out of him was a sob or a barking laugh. "You've made my life so hard, Korra. You've made it so bad. It seems like every time I talk to you something goes wrong. Every time I talk to you it blows up in my face and I end up worse than I was when I started. I'm so tired of it! I'm so tired of this! I'm sick of scrambling to pick up the pieces of my stupid broken life just so you can ruin me again! Every time, Korra! Every time I think I'm getting better, you come along and knock me back off my feet. Every single time! And the worst part is that I don't even think you know that you're doing it! You're so unaware... You're so blind... You can't see what you're doing to me!" Bolin covered his face with his hands to hide what he was certain this time was a heaving sob, and he stood that way for a time he spent trying futilely to push it all back in. When he'd suppressed the emotion enough to speak, he sounded hoarse and low and quiet. His voice didn't sound like his own, and he hated it. He hated himself for sounding so weak and sick. "And the worst part is that all of this is just as much my fault as it is yours. I walked into this mess. I just keep walking into it like a complete idiot. It's like I never learn. I can't do anything right anymore. I can't fix it. I'm completely broken--I'm completely _ruined_ \--and I can't fix myself because I don't know what's wrong with me and I wouldn't know how to fix it even if I did. I keep trying and trying but it just keeps getting worse. I don't even know who I am anymore! I keep screwing up, and I'm tired of trying so hard just to watch everything fall apart again! I don't want to try anymore!"

            "Bolin..."

            He hadn't heard her say his name. The pressure in his head had amplified such that he couldn't hear anything at all through the jumble of thoughts and the throbbing of his cheek and the rumbling of his ears as he clenched his jaw. His whole body had gone tense. Everything had started shaking the same as it had the horrible night he'd realized how truly bad everything had gotten.

            Somehow, things had gotten worse.

            Suddenly the feeling inside him changed in an instant that Bolin would never have recognized as another break. All at once the panic stopped, the shaking stopped, and every muscle in his body slackened, and Bolin felt so completely empty that it seemed the whole world had frozen. The bottom had gone out of his emotions and everything had dropped out of existence. His face didn't even hurt anymore. Nothing hurt at all. The black hole of panic had died, and in its place bloomed a gaping, empty void.

            What was the point? He'd said it himself: Every time he tried, things only got worse. Every time he thought he'd been making progress, things had only gotten worse. Why should he bother? It wasn't worth the effort, not if in the end all he did was ruin relationships and hurt people and feel even worse about himself than he had before. It wasn't worth it. It had never been worth it, and there was no point trying to pretend that it was.

            Bolin felt something like a pained expression fall over his features, and he shook his head against the futility of it all. Then he settled on the matter in his mind, and he turned for the door.

            He was done. It was time to check out.

            "Bolin?" He felt Korra getting to her feet, but that was all he felt from her. His own overwhelming numbness seemed to have dulled his ability to read her, and he didn't care.

            He kept walking.

            "Bolin?" Korra's words came out little more than a squeak. He could tell that she was quivering again, but now it was quivering from fear instead of sadness, and the tiniest voice in the back of his head told him that he needed to stop and turn around and address the issue. He didn't care enough to listen. He didn't care enough to try. Trying would only make things worse. Trying only ever made things worse.

            "Bolin! Stop! Where are you going? Bolin!" Korra sounded like she was begging.

            He did stop, and he stared at his hand on the doorknob, impressed by its stability. It seemed like the first time in forever that his hands weren't shaking.

            "Where are you going?" Korra cried. She sounded desperate.

            A sad smile tugged at Bolin's mouth, and he shook his head. "I'm going to go find a roof to dive off of," he said. He'd meant it to come out sardonic, the same way he had sounded when he'd been talking to Su about jumping from the domes, with just enough sarcasm to feel like a joke. It didn't work. His voice was flat and dead, and he didn't care that those terrifying words had come out with perfect sincerity.

            He opened the door.

            "No! Bolin!"

            He hadn't even managed a step out the door when he felt Korra hanging on his arm. She'd wrapped herself tight around him, hugging at his elbow with her whole body like a child. Her tears made his bare shoulder wet, and out of the blue Bolin's mind turned again to how little he'd liked the sleeveless shirt Su's tailor had made for him and how uncomfortable he felt as a part of the metal clan because he knew that after everything was said and done, he didn't belong. He'd never belong there. He wasn't a metalbender. He was a lavabender. And what good was that in the end? All he could do was burn things, and what was left to burn?

            "Let me go."

            "No!"

            "Let go."

            Korra sobbed openly again, and she pulled harder. She pulled so hard that Bolin was certain if she'd been clinging to his right arm, she'd have yanked it straight out of joint, brace or not.

            "Korra, let me go."

            She shook her head. "I'm not letting you leave! I don't care how much you hate me! I don't care how much you hate yourself! This is my fault and I can't let you do something stupid because of something stupid I did!"

            Bolin let out a small, sarcastic laugh. "But you'll let me do it because of something else, right?"

            "No! That's not what I meant at all!"

            "Let me go, Korra. I don't want to hurt you."

            "You can't!"

            "I can, and I will."

            Korra's grip had gotten so tight it was beginning to hurt. His hand was going numb. But despite his warning, she didn't let go. She just stood there holding his elbow and shaking and crying again. "You can't! You promised! You promised me that you wouldn't hurt me, don't you remember? You promised! You said that no matter what stupid things we say to each other and no matter how mad you get, you'd never hurt Opal and you'd never hurt me! So you can threaten as much as you want, but I know you won't do it because you promised!"

            The statement cut through him just as sharp as Opal's slap had, and it snapped Bolin to attention. He _had_ promised, and so far he'd kept that promise. But in the moment he'd said those words he hadn't been talking about the same kind of hurt that Korra was talking about now. He'd been talking about a physical hurt. Korra wasn't. She was talking about the same kind of hurt he'd felt when the truth of Mako's death had hit him, and that had been a pain worse than any he'd ever suffered.

            "Please, Bolin," Korra sniffled. "Just stay here for a while and sit with me, okay? Just sit with me and we'll figure this out. I'll figure this out. I'll make it better if it takes forever. Please, just let me try. Let me try to fix this."

            With a heaving sigh and a roll of his eyes, Bolin closed the door softly and gave in to Korra's pulling. She led him back into the room, and then she melted to the floor beside the bed.

            Bolin sat next to her, his back to the bed frame, and he hugged his knees.

            "I'm so sorry," Korra said, she pushed her back to the bed frame and pulled her knees to her chest the same as Bolin had done.

            "Stop, Korra," Bolin said. "Please, just stop. Saying _I'm sorry_ isn't going to make this better, so don’t. I'm sitting here because you're right: I promised I wouldn't hurt you, and I mean to stand by that. But me sitting here doesn't mean I'm not angry at you. It doesn't mean I don't hate you. I do. It just means that..." he shook his head. He didn't know what it meant at all. "If I kill myself and that hurts someone, that makes me no better than you."

            It was a thinly veiled insult, and he meant it.

            "Now, stop crying."

            Korra snuffled, but over the next few minutes it seemed that she was at least attempting to calm herself down. While she did, Bolin stared at the door, listening to the sounds she was making and hating the fact that he hadn't left sooner. He regretted that he was sitting there at all. He should've just shoved her away and gone, because now he would have to face his problems instead of running away from them. He'd faced his problems so many times already. He _wanted_ to run.

            Together they sat in a fragile silence that neither one of them dared break. Bolin knew if he said a word that Korra would start crying again, and he imagined that if she said a word, he'd storm out the door in another blind rage. The mood was too delicate for talking, so they sat together unmoving, an uncomfortable distance between them, and while Korra had buried her face in her arms, Bolin had dropped his hands to the floor and taken to staring at the wall. He was so tired he couldn't even think.

            They sat for a long, long time.

            "Bolin?" Korra asked after a time. She'd stopped crying, but her voice still wavered. She sounded like she might break back into tears any second.

            "Yeah."

            "Can I say something?"

            "You don't have to ask my permission to say something, Korra."

            She nodded. He could see the motion in his periphery. Then she drew a huge breath. "I won't pretend I know how you feel. Between what I did today and everything else that’s happened to you, I can't imagine it. And you know, when Zaheer poisoned me and crippled me I was sad, and I was weak, and I didn't like myself very much, but I don't think it's the same as what you're going through. It can't be. It can't even be close."

            Korra paused as though waiting for Bolin to bristle or lash out at her, but he just sat. He didn't have the energy to blow up again. Everything had gone out of him.

            "Bolin, I want you to know that no matter what happens between us after this whole mess gets sorted out, even if you never speak to me again... I want you to know that I'm happy you're here. Even if you hate me from the bottom of your heart for the rest of your life, I'm happy you're sitting here right now. I'm happy that you're alive."

            Her words broke the cold. There was no doubt in Bolin's mind that he hated Korra with every fiber of his being, but those last words struck something within him that made his eyes hot and his chest tight. Nobody had ever said anything like that to him before. All sorts of people had said all kinds of well-meaning things since he'd gotten his mind back, but not a single one of them had ever told him that they were happy he was still alive. Not a single one of them had said that they were happy he hadn't died. But Korra had. Even after all of this, she was glad he was alive, and somehow, she was glad he was sitting next to her.

            Bolin propped his forearm on his knees and buried his face in the crook of his arm. The pressure hurt his face where Opal had struck him. And when Korra put her hand tentatively down and slid her fingers gently between his, the tears came on in full. It was odd how they came without any sound, without any change in the way he was breathing or feeling. It was a silent cry, a cry devoid of any whimpering or sniffling or noise of any kind. It was just wet tears on his face and in the pit of his elbow that burned when they touched the cut Pabu had given him.

            Someone was happy he was alive even when he wasn't. Korra was, and the fact that she'd laced her fingers between his proved her sincerity more than any words could have hoped to do. After all the fighting and all the misunderstanding and all the argument and all the confusion, she was happy he was alive. And even though he hated her more than he hated himself, Bolin knew he had to accept that truth. If he didn't accept it, he really would jump.

  



	28. The Meeting

            Korra never meant to fall asleep. She'd had every intention of staying up all night to not only act as company for Bolin, but also to keep a close eye on him lest he decide to do something stupid or drastic. He had proven beyond doubt now that he'd make good on his darkest impulses, and what had convinced Korra wasn't that he'd had his hand on the doorknob or that he'd admitted without hesitation that he planned to jump from a roof. What had convinced her was the tone of his voice and the look on his face, both of which conveyed a deadness of spirit and a hopelessness whose depth couldn't be measured.

            The shift in his emotions had come too fast for him to have been in control. He'd gone from one hundred to zero in an instant, and Korra had never thought that to be possible. She'd seen him go from calm to blind rage that fast, and she'd seen other people do that, too. She had snapped that way herself when Katara had been trying to help her heal after her ordeal with the Red Lotus. But it seemed inhuman for someone to have gone the opposite way, for someone to have gone suddenly so eerily calm. It had been like Bolin had died on his feet. One minute he'd been screaming at her all full of hate and sarcasm, and the next minute it was like he'd gone completely blank, like something had clicked in his brain that had sucked everything out of him and left him an empty shell. The change had come over him in the blink of an eye, and the change had been terrifying.

            She had all these thoughts in the seconds between waking and opening her eyes, and she began to panic. If she'd fallen asleep he could've gone. If she'd fallen asleep he could've jumped. If she hadn't been there to keep an eye on him and he'd done the unthinkable, it would be her fault. She was the one who had set Opal against him and she was the one who'd been keeping secrets. She was the one who'd crushed him the most, and it seemed recently that she'd done it often.

            She bolted upright with every intention of darting from the room, but paused halfway through throwing the blankets off, startled. She hadn't fallen asleep on the bed, much less under the blankets: Last she remembered she'd been sitting beside Bolin on the floor.

            Bolin was still there. He was sitting in the corner with his knees up, picking absently at the beds of his fingernails. Though he didn't react at all to Korra's sudden motion, she could see clearly how horrible he looked. Pale faced, the red mark had darkened such that if she looked hard enough she could see Opal's handprint against the white. It was a vague shape, though. If someone didn't know exactly what had happened, they would likely think the bruise to have come from the same place as the scabby scratch beneath it.

            "You're still here," Korra said quietly, and Bolin glanced up at her. His eyes were dark and tired, but they weren't as dull as they had been when he'd gone blank. "Were you up all night?"

            "Yeah," Bolin replied dully. He went back to picking at his nails and staring at the floor. "Figured if I wasn't here when you woke up you'd freak out."

            He was completely right. She would have. "Oh."

            "You fell asleep."

            "And you put me in bed?"

            "Yeah."

            Korra wasn't sure if she should say _thank you_ or not. It didn't seem like a moment for thanks. The way he'd answered sounded like she'd been an inconvenience, but then, every word he'd said sounded that way. He still sounded weird and while Korra was certain that the strange quality in his voice wasn't sadness, she couldn't put her finger on what it was. Was it apathy?

            Bolin relied heavily on the wall to stand, but once he was on his feet he seemed steady enough. "Now that you're awake I guess I can go," he said. Then he set off listlessly for the door.

            "Wait," Korra said, and Bolin stopped but didn't look at her. He didn't say a word. "Where are you going?"

            He shrugged. "To bed, I guess. Don't know where else I'd go."

            "You're not going to..." Korra couldn't bring herself to say the words. "You're not..."

            Bolin sighed. "I'm too tired to talk about this right now," he said. "I'm going to go."

            "Bolin, please," Korra begged. "Please, you can't..."

            "We've had this conversation already," Bolin said. His tone remained indifferent but stern. "I don't want to do talk about it again. Here's how this is going to work, Korra. I'm going to go lay down, and you're not going to follow me and you're not going to bother me. Do you understand?"

            "Bolin, please, I'm just worried that--"

            " _Do you understand?_ "

            Korra didn't dare argue with him. Not with the deadly look he gave her. All she could do was watch him sigh and walk out the door with his head held low. She desperately hoped he'd been telling the truth. She desperately hoped he was heading to his room to get some much-needed sleep.

            She sat there for a while, thinking, and couldn't decide if she should be flattered that he'd stayed with her all night. She couldn't decide how to feel about the fact that he'd put her in bed, because that meant he'd have picked her up and carried her. He'd never done that before.

            In the end, she took it as a blessing that he'd stayed. Maybe it meant he'd reconsidered and reasoned himself out of jumping, but even if that was the case he definitely wasn't better. He hadn't sounded better, he just sounded a different kind of callous than he had before, and he absolutely hadn't looked better. If anything, he looked worse. He looked way worse.

            Part of her wanted to defy him and go to his room anyway just to make sure he was being truthful, but Korra figured that would only serve to make things worse. The distrust would make him angry again, and it seemed like the anger triggered the sadness. The only times he'd truly broken had followed enormous, violent outbursts. Or at least, that's what Korra thought. Last night had been the only time she'd seen the fallout from his anger. The first time he'd broken down, Su had kicked them out of the hallway before Bolin could crumble completely, and by the time he'd come back into Asami's office to throw up and pass out he'd seemed relatively calm.

            She wondered if he'd gone catatonic on Su, too.

            In all the drama, Korra had almost completely forgotten about the talk Su planned to have with Bolin that evening, a meeting that Opal, Asami, and Korra were supposed to attend. Su would lay bare all the news they'd been keeping away from him and work to create a strategy by which they would rescue Mako, but Korra knew that after last night there was no way Bolin would sit around waiting for a _plan_. Once the news of Mako dropped, he'd be livid that they had all been keeping secrets.

            But in the end, wasn't this good news? Wasn't the idea that Mako had survived the explosion and been in good enough health to visit Republic City a positive? Even if he'd been wounded, he'd healed, and if he'd healed, he'd be able to come home. And that was the truth of it: In the end, Mako would be coming home, and how could Bolin be upset about that?

            Korra sighed. She knew he'd still be upset. The only thing she didn't know was whether it would cause him to fall apart again or if he was too broken for the news to be so impactful.

            She needed to talk to Su. She needed to prevent the meeting, at least until Bolin had recovered from this most recent setback and they could be certain that he wouldn't overreact.

            Korra wasn't even sure if it had been an overreaction.

            She made her way to Su's office with her eyes on the ground and offered no response at all to the guards who greeted her along the way. She was too caught up in worrying to pay them much attention. She was worried foremost about Bolin, but beyond that she worried about Opal and Asami and whether the friendship shared by _Team Avatar_ would ever recover. Korra didn't know. Asami was mad at her, and Opal was mad at Bolin, but she didn't know if the anger extended beyond that. It was entirely possible and perfectly reasonable that Opal would be just as angry at Korra as she'd been at Bolin. Korra had caused this whole mess, after all. But Korra wondered if Asami would be mad at Bolin.

            Asami had seemed reasonable about the matter when Korra had first started explaining it. She'd been open-minded and accepting that feelings could exist beyond her and Korra's relationship. She had only really gotten mad when she found out Korra had lied. By that reasoning, she couldn't be angry at Bolin. He hadn't lied to her. He hadn't even known what had happened. But Korra didn't know if she had conveyed that clearly enough. She didn't know if Asami understood Bolin's role in all of this.

            Korra was glad when she didn't run into Opal or Asami, but she honestly hadn't anticipated she would. They were probably shut up in their rooms the same way Bolin had probably shut himself up in his room. They probably didn't want to talk to anyone outside of each other, and even then, they'd probably want to suffer in silence.

            Su was sitting behind her desk, but she wasn't engaged in any kind of work. A pile of papers sat in front of her utterly untouched. She looked up the moment Korra entered the room, and she offered a tired but genuine smile.

            "Good morning," she said brightly.

            "Hey."

            Korra made her way to one of the couches and sat down, her legs up. She wasn't feeling confident enough to uncurl.

            "Is everything okay?"

            Korra shrugged.

            "All right. Out with it, then," Su said. If Korra didn't know her better, she'd say that Su sounded angry. But she hadn't, not really. None of the positivity had left her voice, almost as though she had been expecting Korra to come calling. "What's going on?"

            "I've been thinking," Korra began slowly, "that we shouldn't tell Bolin about Mako. Not today, anyway."

            "So, you know about the fight, too?"

            Korra snapped to attention, eyes wide.

            "Of course I know," Su said kindly. "Opal came to talk to me late last night. Well, if you could call it talking. It was more like wailing."

            "What'd she tell you?"

            Su shrugged. She stood slowly and made her way to the couch opposite Korra, where she sat comfortably and drew her feet up. "She was pretty hysterical, honestly. I didn't get much out of her except that she and Bolin had had an argument about something he did while he was in the hospital. That's it. No details. I'm guessing it was pretty serious. Bolin didn't show up for dinner at all last night or for breakfast this morning."

            Korra nodded. "Bolin came to talk to me this morning."

            Interested, Su leaned forward and rested her chin on her hand. "What did he say?"

            Korra shook her head. She didn't want to incriminate herself in all of this. She didn't want to cause any more trouble, and even though Suyin had always been level-headed when it came to matters like this, the situation seemed too volatile. The whole truth would pit all of them against each other even more than they already were. Su would have to take a side, and for her to choose between Opal and Bolin would be impossible.

            Eventually, Korra sighed, and without having decided on a true course of action, she began to explain. "He was upset about the argument, and he... He came to talk to me." For a second, Korra felt bad for lying again. She couldn't remember when she'd become such a frequent liar. "I didn't get much out of him either, you know."

            "Oh," Su said. Her eyes fell to the floor, and a little of the hopeful light had gone out of them.

            "That's kind of why I wanted to talk to you, Su," Korra said with sudden authority. "I don't think we should tell Bolin about Mako because he scared me."

            "He scared you? Did he do something?"

            "Well, yeah, but not like you're probably thinking. He didn't get violent." Korra paused to watch Su relax. "It was actually kind of the opposite. He started out really angry, like he was the night he..." she choked on the word, on the memory of that terrible night. "On the night you, Lin, and Tenzin decided he should come here. He was angry, and he was yelling again. I can handle that out of him, that's not a problem. But then he got all quiet."

            "He got all quiet?" Su repeated. A shade of confusion entered her voice. "You mean he wore himself out?"

            Korra shook her head. She didn't know how to describe it. She'd been thinking about it since Bolin had left her room, but she didn't know how to put what she'd seen into words that would convey just how bizarre and frightening it had been. She drew a breath and folded her hands in her lap to keep herself from fidgeting in her nervousness.

            "The best way I can describe it," Korra started slowly, "is that he _snapped_. But it was backward. You know when most people snap it's like they explode and they're suddenly really angry. It was the opposite, like instead of exploding outward, everything just went back in, and then there was nothing. He just went blank."

            "He went blank," Su repeated again. The confusion was concern now. "What do you mean?"

            "There wasn't anything left in him," Korra said. "One second he was angry and the next second it was like he'd been frozen solid. When I say there was nothing left in him I mean there was _nothing_. I've never seen someone look so empty in my life."

            "Did he say anything after that?"

            He did, Korra thought, he'd uttered the most terrifying phrase she'd ever heard come out of him. _I'm going to go find a roof to dive off of_. And he'd said it so seriously. It had been cold and apathetic and void of any emotion at all, and that was what had scared her. Maybe the words wouldn't have been so bad if he'd sounded upset about it, if he'd still been angry or if he'd been sad or panicked. At least then Korra could call it an impulsive outburst and believe that the sentiment would disappear with the emotion. But there hadn't been any emotion at all. She'd never seen him so steady before. She'd never seen anyone so steady before.

            It hadn't been an impulse. It was like he'd been thinking about it, like he'd been wavering about it and had come to a final decision. Korra had seen it before, she'd done something similar when faced with tough choices, but certainly not to such permanent ends. It was what anyone would do in such a dilemma: Waver for a while, feeling torn until one path finally won out over the other. The mind would decide for itself, and once it had made the choice it would be irreversible.

            Korra settled on her own terrible decision. "No. He didn't say anything. He just went back to his room."

            "Well," Su said thoughtfully, "it is a little worrying, I'll give you that. But he hasn't threatened anything since before we came to Zaofu, and even when he did threaten, it was all very passive. It was all implied. He never came right out and said anything. I think that's a good sign."

            Korra didn't know that she agreed.

            "I'll talk to Opal and Bolin and see if I can't get them on good terms again." Su shook her head.

            Before she could think, Korra blurted, "I don't think you should go see Bolin."

            "What? Why not?"

            Korra didn't want to mention the real reasons. It wasn't her place to say anything about Opal's hitting him, especially if Opal herself hadn't mentioned it, and she didn't want Su to worry about Bolin if she learned how defeated he was. It wasn't her place to present him before he was ready, not without his permission, and if she said, _don't go visit him because he's super depressed and has an enormous handprint on his face_ , it could only make things worse.

            "He was really tired," Korra said. Not an outright lie this time, she thought. He had been ridiculously tired, and Su didn't have to know that it was because he'd stayed up all night to make sure Korra knew he hadn't offed himself. "He didn't sleep much, or at least that's what he told me," she continued by way of explanation, "so he went back to his room to get some sleep."

            "I see. Probably best I don't bother him, then. If he needs to talk I guess he'll show up eventually."

            He wouldn't. Korra knew it already. He'd hide in his room for as long as he possibly could to avoid facing Opal again. Maybe he'd hide to avoid Korra, too.

            Su continued. "I still think we have to let him know about Mako, though. I spoke with Lin after dinner last night and she made it sound like we've got to act fast. Granted, there weren't a lot of concrete details; she didn't let me know of the consequences if we move too slowly, but it didn't sound great."

            "Oh."

            "And all this nonsense with the firebending terrorists has gotten worse, too. There've been six more attacks over the Earth Nation in the last four days. If Mako has gotten in with them and managed to get information, getting him home as soon as possible could prove vital to dismantling them and stopping the violence."

            "Oh."

            "We'll give it time," Su concluded. "I had wanted to have the discussion early this afternoon, but if you think it'll help we can postpone until after dinner to let things cool off as much as they can. Besides, Opal and Bolin are adults. I'm sure they can put aside whatever argument they had and work together to get Mako home."

            Again, Korra wasn't so sure.

            The conversation hadn't gone the way Korra had wanted, and when she left Su's office she did so feeling worse than she had when she'd entered. Again, she considered paying a visit to Bolin's room, but she wasn't sure what good it would do. She didn't want to break the news early and take all of his anger herself, and there was no way he'd accept her comfort. She wasn't sure he'd accepted her comfort the night before, but Korra took it as a positive that he'd not jerked his hand away from her. It was a positive that he'd given in to her pathetic begging at all, let alone staying the night in her room.

            Korra didn't want to push it.

            For a while, Korra lay on her bed, tossing and turning without really attempting to sleep. What else could she do but wait for the inevitable? How could she convey her nervousness to someone without having them punish Bolin for being upset? 

            Korra sighed. He wasn't upset and she knew it. Whatever it was had gone well beyond _upset_. It had gone well beyond _depressed_ , too, or at least what Korra understood of it. He'd hit a low that she'd never known existed, and while Korra knew she needed to do something to help him, she didn't know what it would be. She didn't even know where to start.

            Her mind went immediately to Asami. Asami might be upset, but she was objective and logically-minded, and even if she couldn't identify the source of Bolin's instability, maybe she could help to steady him a little. If everyone helped to steady him, maybe things would be all right.

            It was a good thing that Asami was staying in the room adjacent, or Korra might have lost her nerve. In the three feet separating their doors, she'd begun to waver. But she knocked all the same, and Asami peeked out.

            "What?" she said. She didn't sound happy, but she wasn't angry, either. She sounded annoyed.

            "I need to talk to you," Korra replied. All she had to do was keep Bolin in the back of her mind. Her need to help him would outweigh the anxiety she felt at talking to Asami.

            "We talked last night," Asami rebutted. "I'm not sure I'm ready to talk again."

            "It's important," Korra said. "And it has nothing to do with you and me. It's... Well... It's kind of a matter of life or death."

            The angry tilt to Asami's brow dropped immediately. She opened the door, gaping at Korra as she entered. "What is it?"

            "It's Bolin," Korra said, and she dropped onto the floor at the foot of Asami's bed. She wasn't feeling confident enough in herself or her status with Asami to sit on the bed as she might once have done.

            Asami settled on the floor across from Korra, a comfortable distance between them, and she rested her hands on her knees. "Is he okay?"

            Korra shook her head. "No." She didn't know how else to put it. She wasn't sure that she'd have been able to explain it again, not the same way she'd done with Su. She just didn't feel comfortable enough here. "He's not."

            Asami said nothing.

            "Without starting an argument," Korra began carefully, "did you happen to talk to Opal? About... You know."

            "I did," Asami replied sternly. "I thought she should know."

            Korra nodded. "It's only fair," she said, and she believed it. "I don't blame you. And before I go on at all I want to apologize and tell you that I screwed up and that I know I was in the wrong. I'm sorry." She glanced sheepishly at Asami, who still sat impassive. Then she fidgeted. "Bolin came to my room last night. I came clean. I explained the whole situation. And he blew up."

            "Good," Asami said. "He had every right to blow up at you."

            "I know. But that's not why I'm here. It's what happened after he blew up that worried me. I tried talking to Su about it, but I couldn't. I couldn't explain it to her the way I needed to. I got scared. I don't want anything bad to happen to him because I--"

            Asami looked incredulous. "Bad stuff has already happened because of you."

            "That's not what I mean," Korra insisted. "Now listen, please, Asami. He blew up. You know what that looks like, I don't need to explain it. And then he panicked again, just like he did with Su on the day we went to visit the combustion bender. But then, right in the middle of the panic, he just _stopped_. He lost all his energy, all his emotion, all his everything just went in the blink of an eye. You saw how he was when he panicked with Su, how shaky he was? Well, all that just _stopped_."

            "And?"

            Korra took a breath. This was the part she hadn't been able to say to Su. It was the part she was afraid of. "He kept asking what he was supposed to do. He repeated it over and over and over. And then he talked about how much he loves Opal and how she was gone."

            "Opal is upset," Asami said in a tone of correction. "She's not gone."

            Korra didn't dignify the interruption with a response. Instead, she continued her explanation, afraid that if she stopped now she'd never finish it. "So he was mad, and then he panicked, and after that he... Oh, I don't know how to describe it, Asami! He went _crazy_ and kept talking about how hard he'd been trying to get better but he couldn't. He turned everything inward and started blaming himself. I don't know how what logic he was using--none, I guess--but he called himself _broken_ and _ruined_. He said he didn't know how to fix himself, and the last thing he said was that he didn't want to try anymore."

            "Oh." Asami's grunt was an expression of worried amazement. Korra thought Asami looked like she wanted to say something, but no words were coming out.

            "So, that was the last thing he said, and at the start of the whole thing he was trying really hard to hold himself together. But by the time he said he didn’t want to try, he'd given up on it. I don't like seeing him cry." Korra paused with a grimace. She didn't like to think about it. When she closed her eyes, she could see the anguished, manic look he'd taken on just before he'd snapped. She'd made him take on that look, and it weighed heavily on her heart such that the next time she talked she'd gone quiet and quavering.

            "So, he was crying," Korra said, "and he was pacing and just generally panicking. But after he said he didn't want to try anymore all of that stopped. All the shaking and crying and pacing and yelling stopped dead. It was like he couldn't hear a word I said to him. I kept calling his name and trying to get him to come back, but he wouldn't. He didn't respond to anything, and then all of a sudden, he starts marching toward the door with... A look."

            "A look?"

            Korra shook her head. She wished there was some way to _show_ Asami what had happened, but that was impossible. Words would have to do, except that Korra didn't know which words to use. "I've never seen him look so determined about anything in my life."

            She'd expected Asami to say something. She'd expected Asami to ask a question, but Asami just sat there looking something like disgusted but something like horrified, too.   Korra stared at the ground to avoid looking at Asami's expression, and she wondered if she'd been wearing the same face herself last night when Bolin had erupted. And besides, if Korra was to speak now she'd break down, and she'd cried enough in the last twenty-four hours to last a lifetime.

            After a time, it seemed that Asami had worked through the information she'd been given because the look of revulsion gave way to the concern again. Then, to Korra's amazement, Asami touched her knee very gently, in a way that might've been loving, and said, "Korra?"

            Korra felt her shoulders sag. "He finally stopped. He was at the door. I was scared, so I asked him where he was going." She paused and breathed, then looked Asami square in the eye. She had to convey this with appropriate gravity. She had to make Asami understand the seriousness of the situation. "He said he was going to go jump off a roof. And he _meant it_ , Asami. If I'd let him go, he would've done it. He was serious. It wasn't a threat and it wasn't a bad joke. When he broke and went all quiet? When he stopped panicking so suddenly and just _stopped?_ That was him making the decision. I know it was. It had to be. There's no other explanation."

            "Where is he?" Asami asked. Her voice was gentle now, too. It contained no indication that they had fought at all. To anyone looking in, this would seem a conversation between two concerned friends regardless of any bad blood between them. "Where's Bolin now?"

            Korra shrugged. "I think he's in his room. That's where he said he was going when he left this morning."

            "When he left this morning?"

            Korra hadn't given the statement much thought. She sighed, understanding Asami's sudden heat. "I got him to come back into the room. We just sat on the ground. We didn't even talk. I didn't want to say anything to him because I was scared it'd make him leave. He didn't say anything because... Well... I don't know why, I never asked. I guess I fell asleep, and when I woke up this morning he said that he'd been sitting there all night because he knew if he wasn't there when I woke up, I'd freak out."

            "Oh."

            "He was right, too. I would've freaked out."

            "Su wants to tell him about Mako today," Asami said. "She said so at breakfast. She told Opal and me about it."

            Korra nodded. "I know. She told me, too, when I went to talk to her about Bo. I told her that I didn't think he'd be ready for it after last night, but Su is adamant that we tell him today. She thinks he'll be upset, but that knowing Mako is out there will give him some drive." Another sigh. It was like she couldn't stop them. "I wish I was that confident."

            "I'll go check on him," Asami said as she got to her feet. Where normally she'd have extended a hand to Korra to help her up, she didn't, and that told Korra all she needed to know about their status. "As far as I know, we're still okay, Bolin and me."

            "You're not mad at him?"

            Asami shook her head. A shade of anger clouded her features, and she turned toward the door. "I have no reason to be mad at him. When he kissed you he wasn't himself. I can't hold him responsible for what he did. He didn't know what he was doing." Asami turned around again, more heat to her tone. "And you know what, Korra? I know Bolin well enough to understand that he'd _never_ have done that if he'd been aware of what he was doing. Do you want to know _how_ I know? It’s because he and I have talked about how he feels about you, or how he _felt_ , anyway. We talked about it a long, long time ago."

            Korra got to her feet without saying a word. Asami needed to say her peace, and it was only fair that she have the chance.

            "Korra, I want you to know that we're not okay. You and me? Our relationship? It's on hold, at least until you get yourself figured out." She paused and sighed. "But that doesn't mean I won't talk to you, and it doesn't mean I'm going to treat you badly. I still love you, Korra, and I'm glad you came to talk to me about this because we're all friends, you and me and Opal and Bolin, and we need to take care of each other. I just don't _like_ you very much right now."

            Asami looked down and nodded as though reassuring herself, and then she about-faced and took her exit. Korra didn't feel as bad as she thought she would. Asami's words had stung, but she'd been fair, and even if their time together in romance had come to an end--or a pause, as the case was--she could rest easy knowing they might still be friends. And she could rest easy knowing that Asami would make sure Bolin stayed safe.

            Heavy yet reassured, Korra walked the three feet back to her room. Maybe tonight wouldn't be so bad, after all.

            In the few hours before dinner, Korra didn't leave her room. She spent some time stretching, walking through airbending forms, and thinking. Inevitably, time passed, the sun began to sink, and Korra knew that the time was getting close. She spent what little remained available meditating. She had to clear her mind. She had to be ready.

            Dinner was quiet and awkward. For the first time, Opal, Asami, and Korra sat in the same room at the same table eating the same meal, and none of them seemed particularly at ease. The feeling hung so strong that even Su seemed uncomfortable.

            Opal said nothing the whole while, even when Su asked her questions directly. Korra couldn't help but notice how little she ate and feel horribly guilty about all of it. Opal didn't seem angry: She seemed listless and sad. She looked the way Korra felt, like things had fallen apart just enough to be hopeless. Korra wondered if she regretted having hit Bolin.

            Asami hadn't communicated with Korra at all, except for a firm nod of her head when she entered the room that was all the reassurance Korra needed that Bolin was safe. Otherwise, Asami said little outside of general pleasantries, though she sat attentive to Su's monologue about the conversation to come, and she volunteered to go get Bolin when it was time.

            Su explained the plan: There would be no tiptoeing around the truth. Bolin would come in, sit down, and Su would lay it out point-blank. She said that no matter what his reaction was, she would move on and begin explaining next steps, the steps they'd need to take to get Mako back. The girls didn't have to say a word. They were there for support in case things went south. Su even entertained the possibility that Bolin might break down again, and every time she'd mentioned his name, Opal stifled a sniffle.

            Then it was time. Asami set purposefully out toward Bolin's room while Opal, Su, and Korra made the trek to Su's office. Su and Opal settled on one of the couches, but Korra didn't want to sit. She was too full of nervous energy to sit, and she'd been sitting most of the day anyway. They spent the time in silence. Korra could feel the tension, and with each passing second it seemed to intensify so that by the time Asami entered the room, Korra wanted to cry again.

            "He'll be here in a few minutes," Asami said. She didn't sit, either, nor did she stand near to Korra. Instead, she leaned against Su's desk and gazed at the floor, waiting. Clearly, she wouldn't be taking part in any conversation, if her expression was to be judged.

            Korra's breath caught in her throat when the door opened again. If she'd thought the tension was thick before, it was no comparison to the moment Bolin entered the room, his hands in his pockets and his head held low. It was the same posture he'd had the night before, the posture that indicated he'd run out of energy and completely given up.

            "Come in, sweetheart," Su cooed gently. "Come sit down."

            Bolin glanced up, and again Korra held her breath. The bruise spoke for itself, had deepened in color even more over the course of the day, and a prominent purple spot had developed that hadn't been there that morning. It was where Opal's knuckle had led the way.

            Su seemed to notice the bruise as well, because she got at once to her feet, a horrified look about her. "Oh, honey, what happened?"

            Bolin looked down again, he looked off to the side to try and hide the mark. When he didn't say anything, Su rushed across the room and took his face in her hands.

            She scrutinized him for an uncomfortable time, and Korra knew from Su's motherly concern that Opal hadn't told her the whole truth. Opal must not have mentioned that she'd hit him. She must have been too embarrassed or regretful. When Korra looked at Opal to figure out which it was, Opal looked near to tears already. She'd hunched over, her hands locked between her knees, and she kept her eyes closed tightly.

            "What happened?" Su asked. She must have asked the question a dozen times while she touched his face in motherly inspection. "Sweetheart, what happened?"

            Finally, Bolin answered her. "Nothing."

            Korra had barely been able to hear the word. She wished he'd have said more, even if he'd lied. She needed to hear the tone in his voice to see if it had the same empty quality that it'd had when he said he was going to find a roof.

            "It was Pabu," Bolin said after a few more seconds. Korra heard the emptiness, and her stomach dropped to her knees. "He just caught me the wrong way, that's all."

            He hadn't raised his eyes since Su had noticed the mark, but Korra could imagine how they'd appear: a little dull, a little sad, but mostly dead. She watched him closely as Su escorted him to the empty couch, the couch opposite where she and Opal had been sitting, and he sank down heavily. He didn't look up once: He hunched over, set his elbows on his knees, and stared at his feet. He started absently picking at his fingers again.

            Su reclaimed her position beside Opal, looking far more worried than she'd looked at any point since Korra had arrived in Zaofu, but her worry didn't seem to dissuade her from continuing with the plan.

            "Bolin, we need to talk," Su said in a quiet but straightforward way. "It's important, and we need you to listen."

            He said nothing.

            "This is going to be hard, okay? I want you to know that right now, but we're here to help. Do you understand?"

            The tiniest nod.

            "Mako is alive."

            Even from her position, even knowing exactly what Su was going to say, the words startled Korra into holding her breath. She hadn't expected Su to lay it out so bluntly. She'd expected some kind of buildup, some kind of preparation that might soften the blow, and in its absence Korra watched wide-eyed for Bolin's reaction.

            He didn't move. He didn't even flinch. He didn't quiver or gasp. There was no reaction at all.

            "Bolin, do you understand me? Your brother is alive. He visited Lin in Republic City. He went to see her, and he spoke to her. He's alive and he's healthy."

            Bolin's shoulders gave the slightest twitch, a twitch that could've just as easily been him sobbing silently as him snapping again. But he still didn't say anything. He didn't look up, but he'd stopped picking at his hands. They'd gone stone still.

            "Lin called me," Su continued tentatively. "She said that Mako showed up at the precinct and explained that he'd been infiltrating the firebending society that's been attacking everywhere, the same people who attacked Ba Sing Se. He said that he'd been staying in Fire Fountain City and--"

            "Who did we bury?"

            Su shut up at once when Bolin spoke. He'd been so quiet about it that Korra hadn't even known he'd said anything. The only reason she perked up was because of Su's sudden silence and surprised reaction.

            "Who did we bury?" Bolin repeated the question. Korra could hear it this time. He'd conveyed no emotion at all. It was like he was blank all over again.

            "It was a nonbender who'd gone missing in the explosion," Su explained. This was news to Korra, and judging by Asami's sudden attentiveness, it was news to her as well. "Lin had the remains examined again. It was a nonbender who somehow got mixed up in the explosion and sent back to Republic City."

            Bolin drew a deep, deep breath, but that comprised the whole of his reaction.

            Korra had been expecting him to rage. In every scenario she'd contrived, Bolin had raged and yelled or panicked or otherwise erupted. She'd prepared herself for what she'd thought was the worst. She'd prepared herself for violence. But this eerie calm, this detachment, was far more frightening than anything Korra had imagined.

            They sat in perpetual quiet. Bolin's reaction had stunned everyone else, too, to the point that even Suyin didn't seem to know how to continue.

            Bolin took care of that for her.

            "That's what you were lying to me about, wasn't it?"

            "Yes."

            "And you're not lying now."

            "No. Mako is alive."

            "When?"

            Su looked confused. "What?"

            "When was he there?"

            "He showed up the same day we left Republic City."

            "So, you've known this for _days._ "

            "Yes. Lin called and told me about it."

            Another enormous breath. This time Korra could see something like tension winding up in his shoulders. He folded his hands together tightly, and then he just sat there. The longer he sat in the quiet the more uncomfortable he looked. When at last he raised his gaze to glare between each of them in turn, there was something deadly in his eyes. They fell on Opal last of all and narrowed, then lingered that way.

            "Why aren't you surprised?" he asked flatly, and he looked again to each of the three girls in turn. "Why aren't you surprised about this?" As he asked the question the confusion and anger built in his face, but then it died away in a moment of sudden, horrible realization. "Oh, no. Oh, no, no." He hung his head again, and an edge of mania had come to him, but there remained no hint of anger. He sounded desperate. "Please, no. Don't tell me you knew. All of you knew? All of you knew? How long, Su? How long?"

            Su looked between Opal, Asami, and Korra before continuing tentatively. Korra could tell that she was out of her element. "We've known for certain for a few weeks," she said plainly. "Lin received a note from Mako while you were in the hospital."

            " _How long have you known?_ "

            Su stammered, at a temporary loss. "We first suspected it during the Earth Summit. We spoke to Prince Wu."

            "And all of you knew?" The desperation was coming in full now, and Bolin had long since stopped trying to hide it. He dropped his face into his hands. "How could you?"

            "You weren't ready to hear it," Su said. "We wanted to wait until you had healed up."

            "So, you were going to keep it from me even longer?"

            "Bolin..." Su pleaded. She must have heard the mania, too.

            "Who?" Bolin demanded sharply. "Who all knew? You four?"

            "Everyone knew."

            " _Everyone?_ "

            "Yes. All of us, Lin, and Tenzin. We all knew."

            The silence came again, a terrifying silence that Korra desperately wanted to break. Even if she could have found the courage to speak, there was nothing she could say that would make sense. There was nothing she could say that would release the tension. She just watched while Su leaned forward to try and get a better look at Bolin's face, while Opal's shoulders began to shudder, while Bolin slowly shook his head in disbelief.

            "I can't believe you all," Bolin said at last. His voice was low and dangerous, but he didn't move. "I can't believe you would lie to me like this."

            "Bolin, I don't think you understand," Su said. "Your brother is alive. We're going to bring him home. This is good news."

            He laughed. He didn't look up and he didn't move, but he laughed his callous laugh, and this time it was different. It had been unnerving before. It had been a little bit weird. This time, it sent a threatening chill down Korra's spine and set her hair on end. She felt herself tense against her will.

            But he didn't move. He just laughed for a few seconds before falling silent again. And then he raised his eyes and glared directly at Opal, and she looked mortified back at him.

            "I can't believe you," he said, and it truly sounded like he couldn't believe it.

            He dropped his head again, shook it back and forth.

            Then Opal stood, walked around the table, and knelt in front of him. She took his hands in hers and sat there for a long time in quiet before speaking tearfully. "Bolin, I'm sorry," she said. "I'm so sorry for everything. Please..."

            He didn't pull his hands away from her. He sat there and let her hold on to him, and Opal stayed there, apparently oblivious to his mounting anger.

            Korra could tell. The energy in his body had peaked and he radiated. His muscles had tensed the same way they had when he'd blown up at her; she'd seen it enough to know. But he didn't explode. He didn't break, and Korra knew then that this anger was different. This anger wasn't a temporary mood swing. This was a silent rage, and in the end it was more horrifying than the violent outbursts had been.

            "You've got some nerve," Bolin growled. He kept very still, his hands still tucked between Opal's. "You've got an awful lot of nerve, Opal, asking me to forgive you."

            "Bolin, please. I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to! I wanted to tell you the whole time! I really did! But they--"

            He seethed. The quiet anger grew, and Korra couldn't understand how he was managing to keep it in. He'd never kept such a powerful anger contained for this long. "You could have told me," he said in the same dangerous voice. "It doesn't matter what the rest of them wanted. You could have told me. You should have, and the fact that you didn't makes you just as guilty as they are."

            "I wanted to tell you!"

            "If you really wanted to tell me, you would have done it." Bolin pulled his hands gently away from her and stood. His movement seemed eerily deliberate, like he was trying with all his might to hold back. He kept his eyes down. "I need to be alone. I'm going to go."

            Korra knew those words. She knew the tone. But what could she do? She'd stopped him once already and he'd made it very clear that he didn't want her meddling in the matter again. Korra worried that interfering would only worsen things.

            Bolin got two steps toward the door before Opal stood, tears rimming her eyes, to seize him desperately by the hand. She locked her fingers tightly in his. "You can't go! Please!" she cried, and Bolin stopped dead while she begged. "Please, I'm sorry."

            They stood there still and silent, and while Opal worked hard to stifle her crying, Bolin glared at the ground. His eyes had gone dark and angry, Korra could see them, and his jaw had started working furiously again, clenching and unclenching.

            "You have to forgive me!"

            Korra recognized the trigger for what it was. She knew it by the sudden change in Bolin's posture, by the way his head tilted ever slightly sideward, by the shortening of his breaths and the tenseness that came to his legs. There was no stopping it now. There was no hope of reasoning with him, and Korra knew it. She'd tried it before. All they could do now was ride it out.

            But Opal didn't know that. She'd never seen him snap.

            "I _have_ to forgive you?" Bolin said. Korra couldn't decide if the timbre of his voice was more frightening than the fact that he'd not pulled his hand away from Opal's grasp. He was too measured. He was _too_ still. "I _have to?_ "

            "Please! Please! Stay!"

            Korra braced herself against the wall, afraid, and Su's posture had changed, too. She'd sat up straighter, planted her feet below her knees so she would be able to rise and rush forward on a moment's notice. Otherwise, it was utterly still. There came a second of silence before the storm, a second that Korra used to avert her gaze and prepare herself.

            Bolin's icy cold laugh broke the silence.

            From her periphery, Korra saw the motion. She didn't know Bolin was capable of moving so fast, but when she looked up again, startled, he'd whipped about and broken Opal's grasp, had ripped his hand effortlessly out of hers in a motion that left it high in the air. Korra knew he was going to hit her. She braced herself for the impact, for the fleshy sound of contact.

            But it didn't come. He'd moved like he was going to hit her, but before Opal could recoil away, Bolin grabbed her by the wrist and held on so tightly that Korra could see the whitening of his knuckles. He loomed over her as if he was ready to put her down like an animal.

            "I don't _have_ to do anything, Opal!" he shouted, indignant. Opal's tear-filled eyes went wide and her face twisted in fright and pain. "You're a filthy hypocrite! How could you do this to me and then try to ask for forgiveness? How could you ever ask me to forgive you after what you did to me?"

            Opal cowered. She tried to break away, but Bolin held her strong and firm and didn't budge. Opal whimpered. When Su and Asami moved to intervene, Bolin stopped them with a look that could've frozen fire, then he turned that same expression on Opal.

            "I can't believe you, Opal," he snarled. "I can't believe how horrible you are. You thought I was lying to you. You didn't give me the chance to defend myself, you didn't think for two seconds to see how stupid you were being. You didn't think for two seconds that maybe I really didn't remember what happened!" Bolin's voice had gone shaky. As he spoke, it grew louder and more frenzied. It became uncontrolled. "I don't remember anything, Opal! And now you drop this on me, you unload your own lies on me, and you expect me to forgive you?" He laughed an evil laugh. "That's not how this works, Opal. You don't get to treat me the way you did last night and then come crawling back when it's your turn to get knocked down. You don't get to _hit me_ and then run away because you screwed up. That's not how any of this works."

            Su gasped, and Korra heard her utter, "You hit him?" But no one acknowledged that she'd said anything at all.

            Bolin tightened his grasp on Opal's wrist and she sobbed at him. She grabbed at his fingers locked around her wrists, tried to pry them away, but she couldn't. He was too strong for her. Korra thought she could hear Opal’s terrified begging, but the words were lost in her crying.

            "You know, I should be _thanking you_ , Opal. I really should," Bolin continued as though Opal's pulling and crying hadn't affected him at all. He remained cold and detached and undeniably angry. It sounded as though he had selected every word to hurt as much as possible, and his tone matched the intent. "You hit me and you left and all I wanted to do was crawl in a hole and die because I thought we were done. I loved you, Opal. I loved you! I would've died for you! I would've laid down my life in a heartbeat for you! And you stabbed me in the back!" He shook his head and squinted his eyes closed. Korra might've said that he looked crazy, but there was too much control in his motion for that. "I'm just glad you let me know who you really are before I did something stupid. I'm glad you let me see who you really are before I asked you to marry me or before we had kids or before I killed myself because I thought I'd blown my chance with the most beautiful, understanding, gentle girl in the world! So _thank you_ , Opal! Thank you for letting me know how wrong I was! Thank you for saving me the effort of trying to get you back!"

            "Bolin, please," Opal begged. She was pulling at her wrist with both arms, but it was no use. "Please, let me go! You're hurting me!"

            He laughed in her face. " _I'm_ hurting _you?_ Really? That's where you're going with this? You can't possibly understand how wrong you are, Opal. How could a heartless bitch like you _ever_ understand?"

            Korra didn't realize he knew words like that. She didn't ever expect to hear them out of him. She stood rooted to the spot, too afraid to move and too afraid to speak out in Opal's defense. She watched with morbid curiosity, so enraptured by the spectacle that she didn't hear Su's gasp or see Asami draw her hands to her mouth, mortified. It was just Bolin and Opal hopelessly falling apart in front of everyone.

            Opal kept begging, like her vocabulary had been reduced to five desperate words. "Please! Bolin! You're hurting me! Please!" She tugged futilely. "Please!"

            "See, it's funny," Bolin said blankly, "because I begged you like this yesterday. I begged you the same way you're begging me now. And you know what? You didn't listen. How's it feel, Opal? It's wonderful, isn't it?"

            "Bolin! I'm sorry!"

            "And the worst part of it? _I_ was being honest. I was being absolutely honest, Opal. I was telling you the truth and you wouldn't listen. You wouldn't give me a chance. I don't remember _anything_ you accused me of! I _still_ don't remember it! I never will! But you lied! You lied straight to my face! At least I've got an excuse Opal. What's your excuse?"

            "Please!"

            "You want my excuse, Opal? You want to know why I don’t remember? _Because I had a building dropped on my head!_ " his voice broke as he screamed the words. He yanked her roughly forward and Opal stumbled so that the only thing separating them was Bolin's hand clutching Opal's wrist and a thousand miles of pure hatred. "I hate you, Opal Beifong," Bolin said, and he said the words evenly. He said them with a seriousness that couldn't be argued. He'd said them in a callous, calculated way that tore apart any hope that he might be overreacting in the heat of the moment. "I hate you, and I would consider it a blessing if you never spoke to me again."

            All at once he threw her arm, he heaved her away with such force that Opal crashed into the unoccupied couch, stumbled, and fell. Then she sat on the ground where she'd landed, staring up at Bolin and rubbing at the angry red mark that remained on her wrist. She couldn't say anything. Her mouth moved in abstract shapes, and Bolin glared at her.

            "Now we're even."

            "No," she squeaked, "Bolin, please... Please don't. You can't..."

            "We’re done here."

            When Bolin left, he slammed the door so hard that Opal and Su flinched and Korra felt herself jump. The silence he left in his wake hurt just as much as his yelling had. It was a stunned, dumbfounded silence. No one had ever heard such hateful words come out of him before, and he'd growled them with murderous intent. He'd left the heavy, angry, deadly silence like an awful apparition, and Korra knew that breaking it would cause the little dignity and sanity remaining in the room to crumble apart.

            Asami, for her part, rushed forward, hooked her hands in Opal's armpits, and helped her onto the couch. Opal cried. She hung her head and sobbed ugly, hysterical tears that made Korra want to start crying herself.

            "Did you really hit him?" Asami asked. She sounded pained but steady, like every perception she'd had of everyone had been broken all at once. And it had been, too, between Korra's admission of guilt, Bolin's tirade, and the revelation that Opal had struck him hard enough to leave such an ugly bruise on his face. "You really hit him?"

            Opal shook her head, clutching her wounded arm to her chest. There was no way she'd be able to talk, and Korra couldn't blame her. Bolin had ripped into her too fiercely for her to speak, and the horrible red mark wrapped around her wrist served as undeniable proof. From across the room, Korra could see the imprints left by the pads of Bolin's fingers. She could see the deep purple already beginning to bloom at its center.

            The silence fell again, and it lingered until a monstrous crash echoed from outside. The noise brought Korra back. It brought the thoughts of last night back to her head, and she gasped. He was alone. Nobody was stopping him. He'd gotten a head start. She should've chased after him immediately.

            "Oh, no," Korra uttered as the realization struck. "Oh, no."

            Asami seemed to have noticed the noise, too. She looked up and toward the shaded window when Korra bolted past her toward the door, and then she followed close behind.

            "We have to find him!" Korra cried frantically as she rushed down the hall toward the courtyard exit. "We have to stop him!"

            She wrenched the door open and stopped so suddenly that Asami plowed into her, and Korra had to brace herself against the doorframe to keep from toppling over. They both stood riveted, staring at the glowing field of oozing lava illuminating the darkness around what had once served as Suyin's courtyard. The crash had been one of the dozen or so stone pillars that encircled the metalbending arena falling to the ground, its foundation liquefied by the flow, and as if to prove it true, a second pillar swayed and then toppled with a thick splat against the molten rock.

            In her wildest dreams, Korra could never have imagined the scope of the destruction. Even after all the talks and Bolin's admissions of fear at his own abilities, it had never clicked in her brain just how dangerous lavabending could be.

            "Well," Asami gasped, "clearly he didn't want us following him."

            Korra gaped at Asami. "You don't say?" she jeered. And then she turned back to stare at the flow again, her mind working hard. How was she supposed to get across? Bolin had liquefied the ground in a thirty foot radius around the door, and every moment Korra stood there staring the lava crept farther.

            By this time, Su had come up behind them, and she gasped a breathy, "Oh, dear," that caught Korra off guard.

            "The roof. Su, how do we get to the roof?" Korra cried desperately. "Now!"

            Su pointed down the hallway. Her eyes had gone as wide as Opal's had been. "Stairs are that way. In the office foyer."

            "Stay here. Take care of Opal," Korra ordered. Then she grabbed Asami by the elbow and rushed off toward the stairs. "We'll get Bolin."

            As she ran, Korra imagined. She imagined what it would look like. She imagined how he'd be staring down and thinking and reconsidering. He'd be weighing his options. Even now, he was probably so close to the precipice that a light breeze would push him over.

            She couldn't let it happen.

            She took the stairs three at a time, up and up and up, until together, she and Asami reached the roof exit and burst out into the night. Without a second thought Korra rushed Asami toward the edge, and when they got close enough she grabbed Asami round the waist with one hand and thrust the other as forcefully as she could into the air, propelling a pillar of rock upward beneath their feet that sent them flying. Asami held on tight round Korra's neck.

            With the help of Korra's airbending, they landed clear of the flow by less than a foot.

            "Find him!" Korra shouted, and she pointed to the right. "Go! Look everywhere! Find the tallest buildings in the city!"

            Asami nodded, glanced back at the lava, and then darted away as fast as her legs would carry her. Once she was gone, Korra set out to the left, uncertain exactly where she should go. She didn't know how she'd track him, but she knew the one place she had to try.

            She barreled into his bedroom without knocking. "Bolin?" she cried, and at the sound of her voice, Pabu poked his head out from beneath the bed and chattered. It was no use. Bolin hadn't come back to say goodbye to Pabu, and that only increased Korra's worry. It intensified her determination to find him. "Come on, Pabu!" she cried, and as she rounded to bolt away she felt the familiar weight of the fire ferret on her shoulder.

            "Where would he go?" Korra cried to herself. "Where would he go?" She stopped at an intersection and looked back and forth, frantic. How long had it been since he'd stormed out? Certainly, there'd have been enough time for him to follow through. And he didn't even have to jump if he didn't want to. He was an earthbender. He could've buried himself or crushed himself. He was a lavabender. He could've opened the earth beneath his feet.

            The panic welled up, and Korra found herself unable to move beneath the weight of those horrible thoughts. There were too many ways for him to follow through. The city was too big. There were too many places he could've gone. He'd gotten too much of a head start on them.

            He could very well be dead already.

            "Ow!"

            Korra swatted at her head, and Pabu growled at her. He'd bitten her ear hard, and then he jumped from her shoulder and chattered at her angrily. Of course, Korra thought. Pabu would know. Pabu would know where he went. Pabu always seemed to know.

            "Go!" Korra shouted. "Go!"

            Pabu turned tail and ran, and Korra rushed blindly behind him between buildings and past dumbfounded guards who called concerned questions after her. Korra didn't stop. There was no way she'd find him in time. There was no way she'd find him on her own. There was no way she'd be able to check every likely corner or rooftop in such an enormous city. She had to trust that Pabu knew. It was her only hope.

            Eventually Pabu led her beyond the last buildings into a wide, green area, and Korra felt certain that he'd taken her the wrong direction. They came to the foundation of the dome, and Pabu led her around its base into a copse of thick trees, where he chattered and stopped frequently to let her catch up.

            Until he didn't.

            There came a point at which Pabu darted ahead and Korra lost sight of him among the trees, and as she continued on her track she felt nervous and afraid for what she might find. She slowed her pace as the tree line came into view, and she stepped tentatively into a clearing that she imagined at one point had been peaceful and calm. A collection of charred patches of ground had ruined the grass in random places, and there were spots where all the greenery had gone brown and burned. Rocks were upturned and discarded, and a single tree lay completely and freshly uprooted.

            Across the way, Bolin sat on the ground with his back to a thoroughly charred tree, his knees up and eyes down. Pabu had taken residence in his lap and had started licking at his face and pawing at his heaving chest. Bolin seemed not to have reacted to it, except that he held Pabu around the middle to keep him from jumping all the way up.

            Relief flooded through Korra's body, weakening her at the knees and tightening her chest. He hadn't done it. She'd made it in time. She'd found him, and he looked safe enough, but now that she'd found him she wasn't sure what to do. She didn't want to approach him and set him off again, not now he looked so calm, but she didn't want to leave him alone, either.

            "I know you're there," Bolin said, and it seemed that Korra's decision had been made for her. He never looked up, not even when Korra stepped into the clearing proper. "You don't have to be afraid of me," he sighed. Korra had to strain to hear him. "I won't hurt you."

            Korra grimaced. "Yeah," she said quietly. "You said you wouldn't hurt Opal, either."

            He sighed, then he nodded, but he didn't say anything at all.

            On the one hand, Korra wanted to comfort him. On the other, she wanted to scold him for acting so impulsively. Unable to decide between the two, she said, "You didn't have to throw her like that."

            "You're wrong. I had to do it. I had to prove my point."

            Korra looked incredulous. "Most adults use their words to prove a point."

            Bolin bristled. Then he snapped, "Why are you taking her side?"

            "Because you can't hurt people like that," Korra cried. "You can't just throw people like that! And you can't melt the yard on a whim because you're mad!"

            "Of course," Bolin said, the quiet come back. "Of course, you'd take her side. You're the whole reason we're in this mess anyway."

            "What?"

            "You and your secret keeping," Bolin said hotly. "That's the cause of all of this. If you had told me about what you knew, I wouldn't have blown up at Lin and Su, I wouldn't have run off, I wouldn't have scared Opal and I wouldn't have had those nightmares and I would've been able to protect myself when that stupid combustion bender attacked me! If you had just told me about Mako earlier," his voice broke and he paused before beginning over again. "If you had just told me about Mako right when you found out, I wouldn't be so stupid and so brain dead and so... So worthless! And I wouldn't have kissed you in the hospital--I wouldn't have been in the hospital at all!--and Opal and I would still be together!"

            What could Korra say? He wasn't exactly wrong, but the mental gymnastics he'd gone through to reach the conclusion were farfetched at best.

            "I hate you," he said. "I hate you so much."

            "Bo, come on," Korra pleaded. "We had our reasons for keeping it away from you."

            "I _mourned_ , Korra!" Bolin yelled, and it had come so suddenly that Pabu jumped from his lap and scampered up the tree. "I _grieved_ over him! I thought he was dead, Korra! I cried on his grave! And you knew about it the whole time and you just watched me suffer! What kind of friend does that? What kind of horrible person sees someone they care about suffering and knows they can fix it, but then doesn't? I hate you, Korra! I hate you even more than I hated you last night!" He stopped again, heaved an enormous sigh, and rubbed his eyes as though the tears were coming on again. Korra couldn't see enough to verify.

            "Hey," Korra said softly, "just calm down, okay? I understand you're upset, and you've got the right to be upset. I understand why you hate me--"

            "No you don't," Bolin said. "You have no idea, Korra. You think I'm mad at you because you kept Mako a secret, right? Or you think I'm mad at you because you told Asami and Opal that I'd kissed you and ruined our relationships completely? No." He shook his head a bit manically again. "No, that's not it at all. Korra, I hate you because you took away the only out I had. I could've been done with all this drama last night, but you stopped me, and now things are even worse and I have no way out of it. I _can't_ get out anymore because _someone_ has to go save Mako from... From wherever he is, and it's got to be me."

            "You're getting yourself worked up again."

            "Am I? Seriously? I don't think I ever _stopped_ being worked up!" For the first time since Korra arrived in the clearing, Bolin looked up at her, and he was defeated. "Look at me, Korra. For real," he said quietly, and he opened his arms and gestured toward himself. "Look at me and tell me how I'm supposed to save anyone. I'm a wreck. I'm out of shape. I'm weak, I'm crazy, and I can't control it. I'm _embarrassed_ of myself. And all I wanted was a way out." His eyes and voice dropped low again. "All I wanted was to get away from all of this, and you stole that from me. And I hate you for it. How am I supposed to help Mako when I can't even help myself?"

            "We're going to help you," Korra said. "Me and Asami and Opal. We're all going to help you and we're going to bring Mako home."

            "No," Bolin said. It was a full stop. "No you're not. I don't want any help from any of you. I hate you Korra, and I hate Opal for hitting me and lying to me, and I hate Asami for setting Opal against me. You're all disgusting back-stabbers, and I don't need your help. I refuse it."

            "But you just said--"

            "Never mind what I said! I'll do it myself." The sudden rage died as he spoke. "I don't need your help. Just go away and leave me alone."

            "You know I can't do that."

            "Then sit down and shut up."

            Korra contemplated for a few seconds, trying to decide if she should say something else. She wanted so badly to reassure him that things would work out in the end, but she knew the words would ring hollow. Bolin was right. He was right about everything. He had every reason to hate all of them--Korra knew he would--but he'd been right in his estimation of himself, too. He wasn’t necessarily weak; his lavabending and the inhuman grip he’d kept on Opal were proof enough of that. But if his heaving breaths were any indication, he had no stamina. He was out of shape. And as much as Korra hadn't wanted to admit it to herself, he might very well have gone crazy, too.

            She couldn't leave him there by himself. Someone had to make sure he was safe, even if he hated her for it.

            So Korra sat. And Korra shut up.


	29. Making a Plan

            Bolin sat in silence for hours among the ruins of his quiet place with latent anger simmering in the bottom of his stomach and cold regret blooming in his chest. He'd made things worse without ever meaning to, all because he couldn't control his mind or body or emotions. He'd destroyed Su's beautiful courtyard. He'd hurt Opal. He'd embarrassed himself. And then he'd brought all that trouble to the one place that had managed to still remain unsullied by his stupidity.

            He knew he wouldn't be able to sleep, not after what he'd done in another fit of blind rage. Even if he laid down, he knew he'd close his eyes and see Opal's anguished face and hear her crying and watch her crashing to the ground over and over and over. And if he didn't see that, he'd see the eruption of lava that he'd wrought upon Su's home out of reckless, ugly spite. He'd seen the wave he'd drawn from the earth rise and crest and fall to begin consuming everything in its path without discrimination. And if he didn't see that, he'd see the clearing in which he now sat, once so green and pretty and calm. Between the dozens of scorched mounds of dirt, the rocks he'd upturned, and the tree he'd uprooted, there was nothing left of that serenity.

            Bolin dared not close his eyes, and for the second night in a row, he forced himself to stay awake by considering all of the horrible consequences that would come when the sun rose.

            Across the clearing, Korra had long since dozed off against her own tree, her head on her arms, and every time he glanced at her Bolin felt anger and confusion. Every time he looked at her the simmering in his stomach threatened to boil over, and a rush of adrenaline coursed through him that warmed him from head to toe. He hated her more than he'd ever hated anyone in his life, and he knew that he was right to feel that way. She'd stolen his freedom. She'd stolen his privacy. She'd stolen his dignity. And worse than any of that, she'd taken Opal. She'd forced Opal away from him, and that was unforgivable.

            At the same time, he knew everything was just as much his own fault as it was Korra's. He knew that at the end of all things, he was the only one who could control what he did or didn't do. He was the only one who could control the way he reacted to impulses he might ordinarily have ignored. He was the only one who could stifle his rage. At the end of all things, he was the one preventing himself from healing, and somewhere along the line he’d started projecting his failure onto Korra in order to make himself feel better.

            He shook his head and looked at the ground again, flexed his toes, and dug them into the dirt. The only way he'd ever be able to mend himself was with the help of those he'd come to love, trust, and rely on over the years, and he'd scared them away. He'd frightened them and he'd threatened them and he'd _hurt_ them in so many ways. But they'd hurt him too. They'd lied to him and humiliated him and patronized him. They needed to be hurt, but maybe he'd gone overboard.

            He'd thrown Opal to the ground like a rag doll. He'd gotten revenge for the way she'd hit him and ignored his pleas for understanding. He'd thrown all of that back in her face and then he'd thrown her, too, and she'd deserved every bit of it. She deserved every bit of terror and pain she got, and maybe she deserved more. She hurt him first. She'd been unreasonable. She accused him of lying. She started all of it, and in the heat of the moment Bolin hadn't cared that he'd hurt her at all. In the heat of the moment he'd _hoped_ he hurt her, because at the time, hurting her felt _good_.

            But he didn't feel good now. He didn't feel much at all. As it always did, the rage faded and left a familiar void of emptiness in its place. He knew he should feel ashamed for what he'd done, but he couldn't. And he knew that he should feel embarrassed about what a horrible person he'd become, but he couldn't. The void consumed everything like a gaping hole, and the only thing that could plug it up was anger, and even that couldn't resist for long.

            He'd known about the void for a long time. He had done everything in his power to keep himself from falling into it completely, but the longer he tried the farther down he fell, and now that he was sitting and thinking on the matter, he wasn't sure that he had the strength of mind or body to claw his way out again. Every time he'd crawled out before, someone had pushed him back in, and where only weeks ago he'd been able to catch great breaths of fresh air, now he could scarcely get his head above the surface. He was drowning in the void, and there was nobody there to help because he'd driven them away. Everything seemed dark and hopeless, and in the face of that, Bolin was helpless.

            Inevitably, the sun began to rise and the clearing lightened. On another day Bolin might have looked up and been happy for the coming of the day, but he couldn't bring himself to look up at all, and in his sleepiness the light hurt. He put his head in his hands to block it all out. His eyes stung. They were wet and he didn't know why.

            He sat that way for a long, long time until he felt Korra beginning to stir, and he hoped beyond hope that she wouldn't wake up to see him looking so horrible. He didn't know why he cared. He'd probably looked worse last night. She'd seen him in worse positions before lots of times, but something was different now. Now he'd gotten physical. A line had been crossed, and somehow Bolin knew that there would be no going back.

            Maybe that was why he hated her so much. She'd seen him falling apart. She'd seen him falling deeper into the void. She'd kicked him farther into the void. She'd watched him stride unerringly across _the line_ , and she hadn't tried to stop him. She'd sat there stupid and silent and staring while he tore what little remained of his pathetic life apart. It never occurred to him that she might've been too scared to do something. He couldn't have seen that truth if he tried.

            Worse was that he couldn't think of a way to escape anymore. He'd spent the last month tearing everything he knew and loved apart and knowing that if his life wound up too far gone to rebuild, there was a way out. He'd always had that horrible thought to fall back on, but now that he knew that Mako was alive, that path had closed and he was left standing in the midst of the rubble. Now he was stuck in the middle of the mess he'd made of himself, and there was no one left to help him pick it all back up.

            How could he ever hope to help someone else if he couldn't help himself? How could he ever hope to save Mako if he couldn't save himself? How could he press on if he'd already given up? And how terrifying was it that those thoughts had long since ceased to concern him?

            His quiet place wasn't the only thing in ruins.

            Bolin knew the whole thing was hopeless, but he still had to try. He had to try for Mako, and he had to try for himself.

            After a time the clearing warmed and Korra woke, but she didn't say anything. Occasionally, Bolin would glance up to see her watching him, and every time he caught her at it she averted her eyes as though ashamed. He didn't care to call her on it. Calling her on it would break the quiet, and breaking the quiet meant facing the consequences.

            He supposed it was only a matter of time before someone else showed up, so when he felt footsteps approaching, Bolin wasn't surprised. He didn't bother looking up to see who was coming. He knew already. It was Su, and even from far away he could feel her agitation. He didn't want to see her. If he was this disappointed in himself, he couldn't imagine how disappointed she must be now he'd shown himself for the monster he was.

            "I thought I'd find you here," Su said. She surveyed the clearing. "You two have a fight?"

            She must've seen the rocks. She must've seen the tree. There was no way she could've missed them.

            "Well, I've got a damage report," she continued, apparently unfazed that neither Korra or Bolin had responded. "It's going to cost a couple thousand yuans just to rip out the ruined ground. Then we have to resurface, fix the structural damage and redo the landscaping. Altogether, it's going to cost me thirty thousand yuans or more to clean up after your little stunt. I hope it was worth it."

            Bolin grimaced and turned his face away from her.

            "But I'm glad you're okay," Su said with a gentle sigh. Bolin felt Korra shift uncomfortably, and he felt himself growing warm with embarrassment. "I'm glad both of you are okay. Now, would you please come inside and get some rest? And you," she paused, and Bolin could feel her eyes on him, "you need to get something to eat. Now."

            Bolin dared not tell her that he wasn't hungry. She had to know he hadn't eaten since the kelp noodles two days ago, and she had to know that they hadn't stayed down. He wasn't dumb enough to assume someone hadn't said something to her about it. But by now he'd made the familiar journey through the pain of hunger and dehydration to sit comfortably in the realm of utter, numb starvation, and he'd occupied that place so often before that it really didn't bother him anymore. It was a comfortable feeling. It was reassuring: if he was weak, he couldn't hurt anyone.

            "I mean it," Su said sternly. "You get up and you come inside. You're eating and you're going to bed. Korra, let's go."

            Korra rose at once and walked to Su, and Bolin could feel the urgency in her stride.

            "You, too," Su said. "Up."

            He'd never heard her sound so angry before, but he didn't move. He didn't want to go, and even if he did want to he certainly didn't want to walk back beside Su and Korra. He didn't feel he deserved to walk beside them.

            "Bolin," Su scolded, "get up or I'm _dragging_ you back home. I don't care if you pull the silent treatment back out on me: You're eating and then you're going to sleep. I'm not letting you shut down again."

            Bolin knew if he defied her, she really would drag him back to his room. So, he stood and followed a comfortable distance behind Korra and Su as they began the walk back. They spoke quietly to each other about things Bolin didn't care to listen to, so he watched his feet and thought about how guilty he felt until he heard Su mention his name again, and then he looked up.

            "Right?" Su said to him, looking over her shoulder. "Korra will fix the bruise on your face. I think it would make you feel better if it wasn't there."

            Bolin looked down again. He didn't want it healed. He wanted it to stay there so that he could wear it proud like a badge. He wanted it to stay there so that every time Opal looked at him she'd remember how badly she'd treated him and how much she'd hurt him. He wanted it to stay there so that every time he looked at himself he'd remember why he hated her.

            He didn't say anything and Su made no more mention of the matter. She didn't speak again at all until they'd come to the grounds of the Beifong estate, and even then she only spoke to Korra. "Why don't you get him to his room and I'll take care of lunch. Is that okay?"

            Korra nodded.

            "I'll be there in a few minutes," Su said. Then she parted ways with them, and as she took her leave she called back. "You behave, Bolin. Next time you decide to destroy my house, you're paying for the damages yourself."

            She was gone before Bolin could think of an answer, not that he'd have said it anyway.

            Bolin and Korra walked the rest of the way in silence, and when they arrived at his room, she opened the door for him. He didn't thank her. He entered the room with his eyes on the floor and dropped onto the bed the same as he'd done when they'd shipped him back to Air Temple Island on house arrest. He turned his back to the room, curled into the tiniest ball he could manage, and dug his face into the pillow. But this time he didn't cry. This time he just laid there empty and generally thoughtless, and he appreciated it. At least he wasn't breaking down again.

            He didn't flinch when Korra sat at the foot of the bed. He didn't really care what she did. It made no difference to him. The damage had already been done and her sitting with him wasn't going to change reality.

            "You really ought to eat," Korra said. "You know what happened last time."

            Of course he knew what happened last time. How could she think he'd forget? Last time he'd nearly died. Last time his body had quit on him completely and he'd wound up half dead on the floor of Asami's office looking like an idiot. He cringed into the pillow at the memory.

            "Did you hear me?" Korra asked. She lay her hand on his leg gently, and through her touch he could feel the concern. He didn't know how she could be concerned instead of hateful or angry. He didn't know how she could possibly still care after everything she'd watched him do. "I'm being serious. You need to take care of yourself."

            What could he say? He didn't _want_ to take care of himself anymore. He'd put in that effort before, he'd put in that effort since he'd arrived at Zaofu. And sure, he'd made progress, but in the end what good had it been? In the end he'd wound up exactly the same as he'd been before he'd left. Maybe he was worse now. He didn't honestly know and didn't care enough to decide. He didn’t like thinking about it.

            "You know," Korra began again, and this time her voice had gone all soft and gentle, "I really meant what I said. When I said I was happy you were here. I'm still happy."

            She didn't sound happy. She didn't feel happy. She felt sad.

            "What happened last night," she said tentatively, "that isn't who you are. We all know that. Last night was... Well... It was your head getting the better of you."

            Was it, though? His head hadn't been a part of it at all. There'd been no thought involved in the matter of his reaction at all, not once Opal had started in on him. After Opal had started to beg, his whole mind had gone blank and everything that had come afterward was a sick blur of words and emotion. There hadn't been any control there, and that same lack of control had characterized everything he'd done since he woke up almost a month ago. Didn't that make it a part of him?

            "Will you at least look at me?"

            No. He didn't want to look. He'd just get mad. The anger still simmered inside of him, waiting, and he was afraid of it.

            Had he not been so dead inside, Bolin might've laughed at the notion of being afraid of himself. He wasn't someone that anyone had ever had to be afraid of, but they were. And now he was afraid, too. No one had the nerve to stand up to him when he went into a rage. He couldn't control himself when it came over him. What could be done?

            Korra squeezed his calf gently and sighed, then patted it softly and stood. "I'm going to go. Su will be here in a few minutes with something for you. I know you don't care what I think, but I know you'll feel better if you actually eat and if you actually sleep."

            He thought she'd left him, but he didn't hear the door. When he looked to see where she'd gone, she still stood over him, and the minute she saw his face, she dove atop him and wrapped him in a clumsy hug that he didn't return. It'd been the first time that she'd initiated that kind of contact, and that in itself was a little surprising. After everything she'd seen and everything he'd done, she still wanted to hug him. She still wanted to make him feel better.

            Maybe she wasn't such a bad friend after all. Maybe he shouldn't hate her. Maybe the hate he felt for her wasn't genuine. Maybe it was just an extension of the hate he felt about everything else.

            It all made him angry. Even if it was true, even if Korra actually cared, he didn't deserve such kind treatment. He needed to be locked up and abandoned before he _really_ hurt someone, before he lost control and killed someone. And the idea that he was entertaining those kinds of horrible thoughts about himself only served to make him more afraid, and the idea of being afraid of himself made him angrier. The longer he thought about it, the more the simmering started to boil.

            Then Korra let him go, and she stood over him for another few seconds with her hand on his arm. Then she patted it, too, and the quiet click of the door told him that she'd gone.

            Bolin lay still for a while, focusing all his mind on breathing. If he could regulate that, he could control the anger. It only made sense. He just had to force himself to slow down. He had to force himself to calm.

            In his focus, he didn't hear the door open again, and he only knew Su had come in by the heavy thump of a cup on his bedside table and the touch of her hand on his shoulder. She must've thought him to be asleep, he reasoned, and it was a safe enough assumption. He was lying there with his eyes closed and breathing stupid, slow, controlled breaths.

            Her touch agitated him.

            "Are you awake?"

            He pulled his shoulder out of her hand and pushed his face back into the pillow so he wouldn't have to look at her. He'd disappointed her. There was no way he couldn't have. He'd ruined her home. He'd injured her daughter. He'd taken for granted all the hospitality she'd showed him. Everything she’d given him, he’d destroyed.

            "Come on, now. Sit up," Su said, and she dug her arm beneath his shoulder and pulled at him as though he didn't have the strength to sit up himself. He jerked away from her again, and Su recoiled. "Oh, I'm sorry!" she cried. She sounded genuine about it, too. "Does your shoulder still hurt? I figured it'd be getting better since it hadn't come out in a while." She paused. She waited for him to respond. He didn't. "Come on. Let's try again," she said at last, and this time she wrapped her arm around his back and pulled again. "Stop fighting me and just sit up," she said tersely. "What am I going to do, yell at you? Just sit up, for goodness' sake."

            Defeated, he stopped fighting against her, and with her assistance, he sat upright. He still didn't look at her, though. He watched his toes and worked to stifle the sudden jumble of feelings and thoughts that had come to him. It was as though the shift in positions had knocked something loose, and all at once a potent combination of guilt and anger hit him straight in the chest.

            He stopped focusing on the breathing. It was hard to breathe anyway. He couldn't focus on it with so much happening in his brain.

            "There we go," Su said. She sounded happy now, or happier than she had a few minutes prior. It didn't seem to matter that he wasn't looking at her. "Now, let me see this." She tucked her hand under his chin and turned his face toward her, and Bolin didn't fight against it. He cast his eyes down and waited for the commentary.

            The commentary didn't come. Instead, Su touched his face gently, dragging her thumb over the ugly bruise and squinting as if to see it more clearly. When Bolin glanced at her, she looked thoroughly concerned.

            "It's not the worst bruise you've ever had," Su said frankly. She leaned back but kept her hand on his face as if appraising him. "You look awful."

            Bolin shook his head. What a stupid thing to say. Of course he looked awful. His life was falling apart again and he didn't care to stop it, and every time he thought about the ruins of his relationships and his uncontrollable apathy, the anger grew. He couldn't break free from the awful loop, and he knew that it would constantly intensify until he blew up again.

            "Here," Su said, and she reached toward the table to produce the cup she'd brought. "It's not much, I’m no cook myself, but it's something. It's not even lychee juice."

            He couldn't help but notice the hopeful smile she gave him as she pressed the cup into his hands, and he let his hands and the cup rest against his legs. He stared down at the pale yellow liquid with no intention of actually drinking it. It didn't look very good. He didn't want to eat. He didn't feel like he deserved it.

            "Come on," Su prompted. "Please, don't be stubborn here."

            Nothing.

            "Bolin, you can't stop eating just because you hurt Opal."

            At the mention of Opal's name, his whole body tensed and his stomach warmed. But Bolin forced himself to sit still. He forced himself to breathe.

            "Please," Su said again. This time she put her hand on his back. "I don't want to have a repeat of a week ago."

            No, Bolin thought. He didn't really want to have a repeat of it, either. But he wasn't sure that his fear over that outweighed his self-loathing.

            Su sat in the quiet for a few minutes, rubbing at Bolin's back and watching him stare into his cup, and for those few minutes, she remained calm and motherly. But after a time she started to feel frustrated. The pressure in her hand amplified just slightly, the angle of her brow deepened. Bolin could feel it, and her irritation caused a stirring in his stomach that wasn't borne of hunger.

            "How many times are we going to do this?" Su asked. A touch of annoyance had crept upon her. Bolin could hear it clearly. "How many times are we going to have this talk?"

            The tenseness increased.

            "Last time you pulled this stunt we thought you died. You scared the life out of all of us, Bolin. We didn't think you were getting up. And you've been working way too hard since you got here to throw it all away. You've made too much progress to go back to the way you were."

            Thinking about that made Bolin angry. He hated the idea that he'd pulled himself out of the void, then lacked the strength to keep himself from falling back in. He hated how much he'd inconvenienced everyone, and he hated how much he'd scared them.

            "You _have_ to eat, Bolin," Su said sternly. "It's not your choice anymore. You have to, and do you know why? It's because you and the girls are going to go get Mako back, and you're going to do that very, very soon. You need to be strong to do that. You’ve got to protect those girls and you’ve got to get your brother back. Do you understand?"

            He hated that question. That question made him feel like a complete idiot. He wasn't still so brain dead that he couldn't understand such a simple concept as _food equals strength_ , and the notion that Su would patronize him like that made him bristle. He fought against it again, but he felt the anger rising up.

            "You've got to pull yourself together. Quit beating yourself up like this all the time. You think I'm mad because you destroyed my courtyard? Well, I am, you're not wrong, but when I really consider it, all that matters is that you're okay and that Opal is okay. If both of you are okay, maybe the two of you can figure things out and we can move past this."

            Nope.

            That was it.

            Before he'd realized what he'd done, the cup had smashed heavily against the wall opposite the bed and Bolin was on his feet, towering over Su with death in his heart and murder in his eyes. There was no _figuring things out_ here. Things had already been figured out. He'd figured them out last night and Opal had figured them out the night before that. The two of them had done plenty enough _figuring_ to last the rest of Bolin's life, as far as he was concerned, and the idea that Su wanted him to reconsider the matter was absurd. She'd seen the bruise. She'd heard Opal admit that she'd hit him.

            "Now," Su warned, and she stepped back tentatively, her hands up in a gesture of defense. "Now, you know exactly what's going on here. Take a minute and think before you do something you're going to regret."

            Was she insinuating that he couldn't think? Was she implying that he didn't have enough of a brain to think?

            The boiling rolled and Bolin trembled.

            Had he been able to read her expression he might've seen the fright hiding beneath her steady face. Had he been able to feel her through his feet he might've recognized the fear that had sprung up in her. But he didn't see it and he didn't feel it. He _couldn't_ see it and he _couldn't_ feel it. There was too much happening inside of himself to empathize. He'd gone all but blind. He’d gotten hung up again, stuck in the infinite loop of being angry at someone for caring, being angry at himself for not caring, and lashing out when they tried to help.

            "Bolin," Su said sternly, defiantly, "I'm _not_ going to stand for this."

            He didn't even know he'd struck out at her. He hadn't recognized the snap for what it was. There had been no hope of stopping it. He hadn't seen it and he hadn't felt the contact and hadn't heard the thump as she landed on the ground. But he certainly felt a thump when _he_ landed on the ground, pulled by his wrists with such force that it knocked the wind out of him. His own impact knocked the anger out of him, too, and he lay there stunned and confused.

            "See, now we're both on the ground."

            Bolin opened his eyes and stared at his wrists pinned to the floor. The truth of the matter hit him. The bracers. She'd metalbent them. She'd used them to throw him to the ground.

            "You're just lucky I didn't blow your shoulder out. I thought about it, and I could've, and then you'd be in a world of hurt. Now, you just sit there for a minute and think about what you did."

            She was scolding him now. And she sounded angrier than she'd sounded earlier. He could feel her again. She was livid. But she was also standing, and he wasn’t.

            Bolin looked sheepishly up at her. She was the one towering over him now, rubbing at her shoulder and glaring down at him with maternal disappointment. He couldn't hold her gaze. It was too intense. So he looked back at the ground while the shame came over him.

            "You've got to figure yourself out," she said, and the anger had dulled. "You've got to figure out what's causing you to snap and you've got to do it fast. One of these days you're going to take a swing at the wrong person, and I won't be half as nice next time. I’ll rip _both_ your shoulders out if you take another shot at me."

            Bolin wanted to beg her forgiveness, but he couldn't gather his thoughts together enough to form the words. He'd gotten too hung up. Had he actually hit her? Had he really connected with her? He didn't remember throwing a punch. He didn't even remember when he'd snapped. One second he'd been standing there all angry, and next he knew he was on the floor.

            It was the same way it had happened last night. One second he'd been standing there with Opal's fingers tangled in his own, and then she said something he hadn't heard and couldn't remember, and before he knew what had happened she was on the floor staring at him like he was a monster.

            "I've got to go talk to the girls about Mako," Su said. "If you decide to grow up and act like a man and show your face, I'd love to have you there." There had definitely been anger in her voice, but there hadn't been any sarcasm. It was so rare to hear Su speak without sarcasm that Bolin didn't know how to take it. Was she being serious?

            "I'll even do you a favor," Su continued snidely, rubbing at her shoulder again. "I won't tell them what you did to me. This can be our little secret, Bolin, and I'll keep quiet about it. But if you ever so much as _think_ about striking me again, whatever issues you've got going on in your head there will be the least of your worries."

            All Bolin could do was watch her, terrified by how calm she stayed in her wrath. Her threat might've been empty--it wasn't like Su to hurt people she cared about--but it was entirely possible that she meant every word.

            He didn't want to find out.

            Su started toward the door, her hand still on her shoulder. She rounded one more time before she opened the door and shook her head at him. He could feel her again. She was still mad, but she was sad, too, and regretful, or maybe it was him who was regretful. His mind was too cluttered to tell.

            "I'm still not going to let you starve yourself," she said flatly, less heat in her voice. "I'll send someone with dinner, and if you don't accept it I'll force it into you just like I did last time." She paused and opened the door, and when she spoke again, she didn't look back at him. "I hope you can scrape together a little bit of self-respect before then. I'd hate for you to embarrass yourself in front of someone who doesn't love you as much as I do."

            She left.

            Bolin sat on the ground for a long time after she'd gone, staring at the metal on his wrists. He'd hit her. He'd actually done it. After all the impulses he'd had to do it and all the holding himself back, he'd finally done it. He'd lost. He'd lost last night and he'd lost again now.

            He wondered if that was why Su had given him the adornments in the first place: so that she'd be able to shut him down if he got out of line. It wasn't a bad idea, he thought, but what did that say about her trust in him? He pulled the metal bands off his wrists and threw them to the corner.

            Bolin couldn't blame Su for not trusting him. He didn't trust himself. He wondered if he'd ever be able to trust himself again. The control came and went so suddenly that it left his head spinning, and it had only gotten worse as the time passed by. He'd only become more violent.

            It took enormous effort to get back on the bed, and as he settled in Bolin remembered the conversation he'd overheard between Opal and Korra the night before he'd been attacked. He remembered how worried they had been that in his anger he would hurt them, and now he'd done it. He'd proven them right yet again, and he'd done it in the worst way possible.

            The day passed slowly, the same way the days had passed when he'd been locked up on Air Temple Island. Bolin alternated between sitting with his back against the wall and laying with his back to the door, and any time he felt sleep tugging at his consciousness, he moved. He had to stay awake. He didn't want to dream about Opal or the lava ocean or the combustion bender or any of it at all. If he slept, he wanted it to be dark, dreamless, and dead.

            The worst of everything was that he'd lost his concept of time. At least when he'd been locked up he'd had his stomach to rely on, but the numbness that had taken residence there kept him from marking the passing of hours. He didn't know when it was lunch time or dinner time. He didn't know if the sun was up or down or hovering somewhere near the horizon. The only mark of time he got came in the form of what must've been an attendant entering his room, cleaning the mess he'd made of his lunch, and dropping off a cup of something or other. The only thing the attendant said was that Su had, "sent dinner."

            He didn't drink it. He didn't want to. Putting anything in him now would just make him feel worse, and he didn't want to go through all that pain all over again. If he put anything in him, the numbness would give way to hunger, and he'd be even more miserable than he was presently. Drinking whatever was in that cup would only serve as a reminder of how much he missed solid food and all the satisfaction it brought. He missed the smells and the tastes and the textures, but more than any of that he missed the satisfying fullness that came after a good meal.

            All he had to do was keep thinking how he'd brought all of this on himself, about how all of his problems had been caused by a combination of his own stupidity and confusion, and the simmering self-loathing would fill him in place of food.

            Bolin dozed against his will and spent a long time caught in the exhausted twilight, which separated sleeping and waking. Every sensation that came to him seemed distant and immaterial. He couldn't tell if the noises he'd heard were real or imagined, and after a time he dropped farther into sleep so that he remained only slightly aware of his surroundings, to the point where his brain had started sending dream-like images into his head. He held desperately to consciousness, and by the time he'd crossed the threshold of dreaming, only the part of his mind that thought and worried and overanalyzed remained vaguely intact.

            He saw the lava ocean again. He stood atop one of the tiny obsidian islands watching its surface roll and spit and the air above it shimmer in the heat. This time there weren't people chasing him. This time the people were running.

            Somewhere in the distance he could see the leading edge of the lava flow spreading like water over the bare field beyond the same way it had spread over Suyin's courtyard last night. He was pushing it. And people were running from it.

            The part of his mind that remained awake understood how frightening that was. He'd been in their position before, running as fast as he could away from encroaching doom. He'd be burned by it before. He'd nearly been killed. He'd nearly been buried. He _had_ been buried.

            Bolin remembered the dark and the weight and the noise of rock and metal and glass. He remembered landing hard on his shoulder and feeling a pain rip through his body so fiercely that he couldn't breathe. It must only have lasted a few seconds, he reasoned, because gravity worked too fast for the collapse to have lasted any longer. He recalled opening his eyes and seeing a tiny dot of blue through the falling debris and knowing that it was the end. He'd known it was the end before he'd ever fallen, and there hadn't been enough time for him to think of anything else. The void came too fast.

            He woke, and for a few seconds he couldn't remember where he was or how he'd gotten there. He felt the pressure of a hand on his chest, a hand on his shoulder, and then he recognized Asami's face above him. She looked pale like she'd seen a ghost.

            "Are you okay?" she cried. He wondered when she'd gotten there. "You were making noises in your sleep."

            Without a word, Bolin pulled Asami's hands away and propped himself onto his elbows. It was as far as he could get before his head started swimming and he was forced to shift his weight. He rolled to one side but he stopped when the bedspread started to spin. He watched it for a while until he was certain it had stopped moving, and then regarded Asami. What was she doing there?

            "I... You… Were asleep," Asami said. She was flustered.

            She looked a little nervous. Bolin couldn't help but wonder if simply being around him was intimidating for her. He wouldn't blame her if it was, considering the way he'd blown up and hurt Opal. At least Opal had bending--if she'd wanted to, she _could've_ protected herself--and Korra was the Avatar. If Bolin did anything stupid to her, she could pop into the Avatar State and lay him out flat in half a second. Asami wasn't the same. She was strong, yes, but Bolin really doubted that she'd be able to stop him if he came at her, especially not if he came at her with lava and she didn't have her shock glove.

            "I didn't want to wake you up," she continued, and when Bolin sat up properly she wrapped her arm around him and helped even though he hadn't needed the assistance. Then she didn't let go. "So I just sat here for a while, but then you started making these weird noises."

            He raised his eyebrow at her skeptically. No one had ever said anything about _weird noises_ in his life. If he'd made them before, certainly Opal would have said something at some point, wouldn't she?

            "Are you okay?"

            Bolin looked at his hands. He didn't say a word.

            "Okay," Asami said, deadpan, "that was a stupid question. I know. I came in here to talk to you, but you were asleep. I know you haven't been sleeping lately, so I didn't bother you. Do you mind if I talk to you for a few minutes?"

            Nothing.

            Asami sighed, turned around, and sat on the bed beside his folded legs. Then she took his hands in hers and rubbed at his palms with her thumbs. It felt good.

            "You don't have to talk, I get it. But will you at least nod at me? Will you at least acknowledge that you hear me?"

            He nodded.

            Asami smiled. "Thank you," she said. "Now... Did you have another dream?"

            Bolin nodded. Then he shrugged. It didn't really matter. Asami wouldn't care about it anyway. Who cared if he dreamed about the day he should've died.

            "You want to talk about it?"

            Nothing.

            "Stupid question, I suppose. Well, I'll leave it alone, but if you want to talk about it I'm around, okay?"

            He nodded.

            Asami began again, and this time her voice was slow and methodical. The hand massage she had started slowed, too. "We talked. Su talked to us at dinner tonight and I figured you ought to be in on things. She said she'd told you to come out to be part of it. I guess you didn't want to."

            No, he hadn't.

            Asami shot a glance to the bedside table. Bolin didn't follow her gaze. "I guess you didn't want to eat, either."

            No, he hadn't.

            "Well, we've got a plan worked out," Asami continued, unfazed by Bolin's quiet. She talked slow again, like she was waiting after every word for Bolin to react, like she was going to stop in the middle of her explanation if he moved the wrong way. "We figured out a plan to go get Mako, and I thought you should know. We assumed you'd want to come."

            How kind of them, Bolin thought dryly, to consider that he might be interested in helping rescue his brother who'd been missing for near two months now. Then he paused in his thoughts and reconsidered: It _was_ actually pretty thoughtful. They could've counted him out the same way they had for the Boiling Rock investigation. He felt just as weak as he'd felt back then, and he was certainly just as insane.

            "We're going to leave tomorrow afternoon," Asami said, "and we're going to take Oogi north to Omashu. Su got Tenzin's permission. In Omashu we're going to stock up on supplies, get a good night of sleep, and then head out properly in the morning. Then we'll hop over to Fasong Village, then west into Fire Nation territory. Getting there will take three or four days, depending on how often we stop to rest."

            Bolin nodded his understanding when Asami paused. Everything sounded reasonable so far.

            "When Mako talked to Lin, he told her that he was stationed in Fire Fountain City. That's on the far north side of Baihe Island, but we can't just land a sky bison in the middle of it because Mako said that there were hundreds of people there. We plan to land somewhere south of the city and make our way in on foot, but we won't know a lot of details until we're actually in the thick of it. It'll depend on how secure they've made the island."

            Again, Bolin nodded. He felt the strange, nervous urge to fidget, to wring his hands together, but Asami still held his in hers and he didn't necessarily want to break the contact. His hands twitched, instead.

            "Are you okay?"

            He nodded.

            "I know this is all happening really fast," Asami said. "But it has to. Are you up for it?"

            Yes.

            "Good." Asami smiled and thumbed at his palms again. Do you need any help getting ready?"

            For the first time in a while, Bolin looked up and around the room. It felt too big now, and he'd had too few possessions to fill the space. It felt empty, and it made him feel empty, too.

            He shook his head. He wouldn't need any help getting ready, at least not any help that Asami or Korra could provide.

            Asami lingered there for another few seconds holding his hands in hers, and Bolin felt her grip tighten a fraction. She'd gotten through the whole conversation so far without much in the way of nerves, but now they had sprung up, and when Bolin looked to her face, her brow had furrowed and she frowned.

            "There's one more thing," she said, looking down. Then she squeezed his hands and said, "Opal is coming."

            In his silence, Bolin was dumbstruck. He couldn't have found words even if he'd wanted to say them. Asami must've noted his wide eyed surprise, because she squeezed tighter.

            "Yeah. She's coming. I... We tried to get her to stay here, but she insisted. She said that she could handle things and be civil with you if it meant getting Mako back safely. She wants to help, even if you don't want her to." Asami paused, and Bolin's hands tensed beneath hers. She was unaffected by the change. "Bolin, she insisted. She was adamant. Nothing Korra or I could say would change her mind, so please try to understand, okay?"

            Bolin looked at their hands linked together and felt Asami's nervousness, and he felt a pang of guilt. She was afraid that he'd blow up at her, but he had no reason to. It wasn't her fault. It was Opal's fault.

            He nodded. Then Asami hugged him tight and planted a kiss on his cheek. He appreciated the sentiment, but beneath the gratitude the anger was bubbling again, and it was Opal's fault.

            Asami pulled away from him. She smiled gently. "Now, I need you to get ready to go and get some sleep, okay? Actual, _good_ sleep. And you have to eat something because if you don't, you won't be able to lavabend, and who am I supposed to rely on to keep me safe if I don't have you around?"

            Bolin looked skeptical again. She could rely on Korra. The statement was just Asami pandering to him, but he knew she meant well.

            She hugged him again, more gently this time, and with her arms around his neck she said, "Go get yourself a bath, too, okay? You're kind of stinky. Bath, food, and rest. That's what you're going to do. Asami's orders."

            When she pulled away this time, he felt his face warm. He was so embarrassed that he couldn't even meet her eyes when she slid off the bed and wished him good night. He wondered if it had been a clever tactic to divert the anger.

If it was, it had worked well enough to save Asami the hassle of dealing with him when he was mad.

            But now that Asami was gone, he was beginning to feel the irrationality coming on. His mind kept getting stuck on Opal, and there were so many conflicting feelings about her ramming into each other that he didn't know what to think. He was angry that she would have the nerve to come along, but he was a little touched that she would be willing to put herself at risk to help after everything that had happened. But she wasn't willing to go for his sake. She wanted to go for _Mako's_ sake. She wanted to go to make herself feel less bad about lying. It had to be that way.

            Bolin didn't want her to go for so many different reasons. He didn't want to see her at all. He didn't want her to speak to him. The matter of rescuing Mako was none of her business: Mako wasn't her family. He didn't want her to be around in case he got upset again and lost control. He had to convince her to stay home. She had to stay home and she had to stay safe, because even if he hated her he couldn't bear the thought of her getting hurt. He had to convince her because he loved her.

            Bolin rose and wobbled for a moment. What little nap he'd had hadn't served to dull the fatigue. Then he started toward the door without a plan in mind. He'd go talk to her. He'd go try to reason with her. He'd throw himself at her feet and beg her to stay home, even though he hated her and thought with his whole being that _she_ should be throwing herself at _his_ feet. He would convince her to stay home because he loved her.

            The whole way to Opal's room he thought about what he would say, yet when he arrived outside her door he'd come no closer to a plan. All Bolin knew was that the anger simmering in his stomach had seemed to die away completely to be replaced with nervousness. He was terrified. What would happen if he couldn't convince her? What would happen if she came along and she was hurt? What would happen if she died?

            Bolin knocked on the door, and when Opal opened it her eyes went wide and his stomach dropped to the floor. But she'd never know that. He couldn't let her see how afraid of her he was.

            "We need to talk," Bolin said, and without allowing Opal the chance to slam the door in his face, he pushed into the room, taking special care to avoid bumping into her.

            Opal said nothing, but she closed the door gently behind him. She didn't move, and her hand stayed on the handle. It was like she'd been frozen with surprise or fear. Bolin couldn't tell which it was. All he knew was that he felt awful and that he didn't want to look at her, but at the same time all he wanted to do was wrap her up and apologize with all his heart for hurting her.

            "What?" she said coolly. She'd always been good at hiding her emotions when she needed to. He'd never liked that about her. "What could we possibly need to talk about?"

            "You're not coming with," Bolin replied. He crossed his arms over his chest, tucked his hands into his armpits, and glanced toward her. The bruise on her wrist had darkened.        He could see the shapes of his fingers in dark purple blobs across her skin, and a greenish-brown halo extended halfway to her elbow.

            He'd done more damage than he thought.

            "That's not your decision to make," Opal said tersely. "I'm going, and that's final."

            "No. You're not."

            "Why?"

 _Because I love you. Because I don't want you to get hurt. Because I want you to stay safe while I run off to get myself killed._ Bolin took an enormous, calming breath. "Because I can't stand the sight of you."

            She couldn't know how much she'd hurt him. He had to take a stand here. He had to make her stay.

            "Well, I don't really want to see you, either, but this is more important than you and me. It's going to take everything we've got to get in there and get Mako home safely."

            Bolin knew he should've been getting angry. If any other person had been taking such a tone with him, he'd be livid. If anyone else had talked to him that way, he'd be boiling. But nothing came. It was like shame had overcome the rage, and even though he was deeply unhappy with Opal, he couldn't get angry at her again. He'd spent all his anger against her last night.

            "You're _not_ coming," Bolin said again.

            "Yes, I am." Opal opened the door and motioned toward the hallway. "Now, get out."

            She wasn't buying it. Bolin knew she wasn't buying it, but at the same time he could feel her getting more and more nervous.

            He knew what he had to do.

            "Bolin, get out."

            With a deep preparatory breath, Bolin mustered all his nerve, rounded on her, and marched forward. He had to be convincing. He had to frighten her out of coming. It was the only thing that would work.

            Bolin planted his palm flat on the door and slammed it shut so hard that Opal lost her grip on the knob. Her eyes went wider still, and she stepped backward.

            "You're not coming," Bolin repeated. He forced his voice low. It hurt. That voice didn't hurt when he was angry, but he wasn't angry now. Now he was sad. He was scared. He had to do whatever he could to make Opal stay. He couldn't let up now. She was afraid.

            Opal swallowed hard and drew herself inward, stepped back again as Bolin loomed above her. "Yes I am," she said, but the defiance in her voice had begun to fade. Bolin could hear the slightest waver. "You can't stop me."

            "I don't want to hurt you, Opal," he said. He hoped he'd come across as convincing.

            Opal laughed derisively at him. "Really? You keep threatening me and all you can do is give me a stupid little bruise!" She brandished her arm at him. She waved it in his face, and while Bolin wanted to cower away from it, he stood firm and resolute. He had to be convincing. He had to frighten her into staying home.

            "I'll warn you one more time. You stay here, or I'll _make_ you stay here."

            He could see her weighing her options through the minute changes in her expression, through the twitching of her brow and the determined narrowing of her eyes. He knew the look. He'd stared at her for too many hours not to know it. She was going to call him on his bluff, and if he gave her the chance to do that, he'd falter. She couldn't know. He had to force her to stay home. She couldn't get hurt. He couldn't let her put herself in danger. He had to keep her safe. He loved her too much to let her risk herself.

            "Opal," he growled, "say the words. You're. Not. Going."

            He knew it. She was going to defy him. He couldn't let it happen.

            Bolin took a moment to steel himself, he took two deep breaths that Opal must have confused as anger welling up, because when he exploded into action she recoiled. She wasn't fast enough. Bolin knew she wouldn't be.

            He meant to grab her by the shoulder, but she moved such that he caught her closer to the neck. There was no way to stop the motion. He couldn't. If he stopped now, she'd know he was faking the anger.

            Bolin slammed her against the wall with all his strength, he slammed her into it so hard that it hurt his hand, and instead of crying out Opal gasped sickly. He grimaced at the sound. He looked away as she broke. The false confidence with which she'd been shielding herself shattered, and she burst into ugly tears and grabbed at his arm.

            He remembered what the anger felt like, and he tried as hard as he could to emulate it. He tried to twist his face into the same furious expression when he glared at her. It didn't matter. She'd closed her eyes so tight that her face had gone red. Or maybe her face had gone red because of how tightly he was holding onto her neck or how forcefully he was pressing her into the wall. He didn't know.

            "Stop!" Opal cried. "Stop!"

            "You're not going!"

            She sobbed and he tightened his grip. She clawed at his arm so suddenly and so fiercely that he almost dropped her, and that really did make him angry. Bolin grabbed the offending hand in his own and pushed it against the wall, too. He had her pinned. He'd had her pinned like this before but under completely different circumstances. They were close. They were inches apart.

            "Please stop!"

            "Tell me you're not going."

            "Bolin! Stop!"

            She'd started shrieking. Bolin couldn't tell if there was more fear or more pain in the crying. Every sob tore into him more than the last until he felt he might start crying himself. But he held it in. He had to hold it in. He had to make her stay.

            "Tell me you're staying here," Bolin said, his voice low and quavering. The tremble made his voice frightening. He sounded angry, but he wasn't angry. He hated himself.

            Opal couldn't make words. All she could do was tug weakly at his arm with her free hand and shuffle her feet about the floor in pain and try to gain the leverage to break free. He could feel her trembling again, the same as she had been last night. She was mortified.

            "Tell me," Bolin said. "Tell me you're staying."

            Opal shook her head. She shook her head frantically, manically. He could feel the muscles in her neck flexing and shaking. She was defying him still. He hated her. He didn't want to hurt her, but she had to stay home. If he didn't hurt her, she'd be killed.

            Bolin leaned in close to her with desperation driving his every move. He pressed his body against hers, their faces so close that he could feel the tiny little hairs on her cheek that he'd loved to play with and she hated. He didn't even know what he was doing. He didn't know exactly what he was trying to accomplish, but he had to do something.

            "Opal." He said her name in a deadly whisper. "I know every inch of you inside and out." He paused and drew a shaky breath. The crying was coming back up again, and to cover the sob that slipped out he pushed against her harder. "Now, tell me, or I'll hurt you. I'll hurt you in ways you can't even imagine."

            Opal changed. The crying stopped immediately, and the convulsive sobs quickened. He could feel her chest heaving against his, he could feel her pulse through her wrist and in her neck. A great heat radiated from her face. It was like all she could do was inhale frantic, panicked breaths. He knew those breaths. He'd taken them himself.

            "NO!"

            She screamed the word so loudly that it made Bolin's ear ring, and she yanked against him with strength he'd never felt out of her before. It was a primal strength, the kind of strength that could only come from pure dread. It was the strength of fear, of abject terror. Opal had come to a conclusion. She had to know what was to come, or at least she knew what he was threatening, and the way she'd reacted made it seem as though she was trying to run from the very thought.

            "NO!"

            Something animalistic had come over her. She kicked at him and raked his arms furiously with her nails. She drew blood. And then she wrenched her wrist away from him, thrust her palms into his chest, and knocked him back with a burst of concentrated air so powerful that he felt his chest beginning to bruise before he ever hit the floor.

            He did hit the floor. And he lay there in agony for a minute while Opal wailed, and then he realized that she was going to bolt. He jumped up without waiting for his breath to come back, and as she grabbed at the door he grasped her about the arms and waist, ripped her away, pulled her so forcefully that her feet left the floor, and pushed her face-down to the ground. She cried and screamed and fought with wild panic.

            "Opal, stop!"

            "No!" she cried. "No! No!" She flailed, tried to push herself back up. "No!"

            Bolin pinned her. He had to pin her before she hurt herself or hurt him worse than she already had. His chest ached where she'd air blasted him. It was still hard to breathe. His arm was stinging. It was a bloody mess. He wrapped his hands firmly around her wrists to force them to the ground, and then he planted his knee in the middle of her back to keep her down. She shrieked and bucked and writhed, even with his restraint, so he followed through the rest of the way, straddled her back, and held her with all his weight.

            "Stop!" he cried. "Just stop it!"

            Opal went quiet at once so that her sobs turned to pathetic whimpers and trembling. She stopped fighting. She started trying to curl up beneath him, like she was trying to disappear. "Please," she whimpered, "please, please don't. Please don't."

            Bolin closed his eyes. If nothing else, he'd succeeded in making Opal scared of him. The only question that remained was if he'd scared her enough to make her stay home, if he'd scared her enough that she wouldn't want to be near him.

            "Say it," he snapped. "Say you're staying here."

            She nodded and wept. She didn't say anything. He couldn't even see her face. She'd pressed her forehead into the floor and nodded.

            "Say it!"

            Opal sobbed again, and she nodded again. She pulled against his hold and tried to get her feet underneath her. He pressed down harder.

            "Say it!"

            She nodded. "I won't go," she cried. "I'll stay here. I'll stay here, just please don't hurt me. Please don't... Please don't..."

            The crying came on in full again, and Bolin sat atop her for another few minutes while she sobbed anew, and once he was satisfied that his point had been made and an agreement had been reached he rose to his feet, grasped at his ribs, and grimaced. It hurt to stand upright. It hurt to breathe.

            "If I ever find out you told anyone about this," Bolin said, the angry tone persisting, "I won't be so nice. If you tell, next time I won't let go."

            She didn't look at him. She didn't respond at all. She just laid there crying for a few seconds before pushing herself to her knees, doubling over, and sobbing hysterically into her thighs.

            He hated himself, and he left.

 

*****

 

            Korra had a bad feeling. She'd had a bad feeling all day, ever since she, Asami, and Opal had sat with Su to discuss their plans. Something had been off.

            Su hadn't been herself. It seemed like through all of the recent mess she'd maintained her impish wit and sarcastic humor no matter what happened, and even when she was flustered for a second or two, she bounced back quickly. That attitude hadn't been there today: Su was down to business. There were no jokes, there were no quips, no snide attempts at leavening the mood. The conversation had been very much a matter of, "Here's what you need to do, here's how you're going to do it, now go do it," and Su's point-blank explanation hadn't helped alleviate the tension.

When the meeting had concluded and everyone had gone their separate ways, Korra spoke at length with Asami about the matter, and the only conclusion they could reach was that Su had visited Bolin shortly before she'd met with them. They agreed that something must have happened to leave her in such a foul mood, but they couldn't guess what it might have been. Bolin had yelled at Su before--he'd yelled at all of them before--and even still, his yelling had never seemed to bother her that much because she always dismissed it as a lot of brainless bluster without much to back it up. Korra remembered Su saying once that it was all bark and no bite. Korra wondered if there had been some bite, especially after the last couple days.

            Together, Korra and Asami decided to check up in shifts to allow themselves time to get ready, too. Korra would visit first with Suyin to see what information she could get out of her, while Asami went to visit with Bolin and help him pack. Then while Korra packed, Asami would go see what she could get out of Su. In the evening, Asami would pack and Korra would check in with Bolin, if only to make sure that he was ready to go and to be certain that someone saw him eat something. Su had emphasized how important it was that he not starve, especially if he was going to be helping them rescue Mako.

            Korra couldn't blame Su for being worried. Everyone had seen what happened last time Bolin hadn't kept up with himself. They couldn't have him falling apart in the middle of their rescue effort. There couldn't be any fainting, no panicking, no blowing up, no instability. Any of that would jeopardize the whole thing, and if he did it while they were in enemy territory, it could put all their lives at risk. Bolin had to be solid as the rock he bent, or none of it would work.

            Having finished preparing herself to leave, Korra stopped in the kitchens, then made her way to Bolin's room with only slight apprehension. When she knocked and there came no answer from within, she sighed. Figuring Bolin to be sleeping, Korra pushed open his door gently and peeked inside.

            He wasn't there. He wasn't there anywhere, and considering the hour, that was strange. After two days virtually sleepless, she figured he'd have fallen asleep already, especially if Asami had conveyed the fact that he'd be going on the rescue mission with them. Certainly he wouldn't have been so stubborn in his recklessness that he'd continue forcing himself to stay awake.

            Korra dropped off his cup on the bedside table beside the three other cups, still full, and regarded them carefully. It was a bad sign.

            She sat down on the bed to wait, and she sat there for a while, long enough that if Bolin's absence had been a matter of routine, he'd have returned. A bad feeling came into her stomach.

            The most logical explanation would be the bathroom, Korra thought, and thus she made her way down the hall. Even a few doors down she could hear the shower running, and the bad feeling disappeared. She felt a little silly for assuming the worst.

            She knocked on the door. "Hey," she called, "I dropped off some food in your room. Are you going to be done soon?"

            He didn't answer. It was odd, normally if Korra yelled through the door he'd yell back.

            "Bo?" she called. "You in there?"

            Nothing.

            She cracked the door but didn't go in. She just listened. The shower was definitely running, but there was no steam. There wasn't heat. It was weird.

            "Bolin?"

            Korra opened the door the rest of the way and looked in. Very little of the room was visible from the door as a matter of privacy: Only a pair of matching sinks and mirrors sat to the left of the door. From a cursory glance, there was no evidence that anyone was there except the running of the shower around the corner. There were no clothes on the floor or the sink and there wasn't a towel hanging anywhere. It was just the water.

            Korra closed the door. "Bolin?" she called. "You in here?" She advanced slowly into the room, her hand on the wall, and she rounded the corner separating the showers from the rest of the room. Then she froze in silence. She could hear him breathing the frantic breaths of panic that had become so familiar to her lately. He must've been trying to hide it.

            Korra rushed around the corner: Naked or not, she wasn't going to let him panic by himself. She prepared herself for the worst, for the most embarrassing, for the most jarring, but none of that actually readied her for what she saw.

            He was there, certainly, sitting on the floor in the corner of the tiled shower room, but not in any way she'd expected him to be. He was curled up, his knees to his chest and his arms over his head--it was a typical position for him--but he remained fully clothed, shoes and everything, and was soaked to the bone and shivering. More jarring than the clothes, though, was the blood. It seemed to be everywhere, but Korra knew it was because of the water, and when she looked at him she could see the source. A set of long, parallel scratches on his right forearm bled from his elbow to his wrist.

            Slightly panicked herself, Korra rushed forward and killed the water, and then she ripped a towel from the nearby rack and tossed it around his shoulders.

            "What happened?" Korra cried. "What are you doing in here?"

            He was freezing. She wondered how long he'd been there: Long enough for the hot water to have run out, certainly. Instead of answering her, he shook his head and looked at the ground. He looked empty again.

            "Hey!" Korra cried. "What happened? What are you doing?"

            He shook his head again and drew a trembling breath. It was a quiet panic that had overcome him now. It was unlike any Korra had seen before. But he maintained the wide-eyed look and pale face and rapid breathing of times before. But he was quiet. He was eerily quiet.

            Korra grabbed his face and forced him to look at her. She felt bad when she remembered the bruise. "What are you doing?" she cried.

            "I feel dirty," he said lamely.

            "You're absolutely out of your mind!" Korra cried. "What happened to your arm?"

            He looked at it vacantly, touched the open scratches and grimaced at them. "I was stupid," he said. "I deserve them."

            "Oh for goodness' sake!" Korra yelled. She patted the towel about his shoulders. "Get up. You've got to get in some dry clothes before you get sick. I can't believe you're doing this again. Why are you doing this again?"

            "I didn't mean to," Bolin said weakly. "I really didn't mean to. It got out of hand. I just wanted to scare her a little bit."

            Korra's brow furrowed. "Bolin," she said firmly, "stop talking. Get up, and lets go get you changed. Can you do that?"

            Nothing.

            Korra wrapped her arms beneath his and pulled him to his feet where he stood shaking so fiercely that she worried he'd topple. Then, his arm dripping around her shoulder, she led him back to his room, sat him on his bed, and began rummaging through his drawers for something dry. She was just glad nobody had run into them in the hallway. She couldn't imagine how she would've explained to them what was going on.

            "Here," Korra said, presenting him with what she'd found. "Change."

            Bolin accepted the clothes, but he didn't move to change.

            "Put them on," Korra said. "Please. Here, I'll turn around."

            Korra turned and stared at the ground, waiting for him to move. It took a long time, but eventually she heard the squeak of the bedsprings as he stood, the splat of wet clothes on the ground, the gentle rustling of cotton as he changed. When the noise stopped, she turned around and looked at him. He hadn't bothered to dry himself before he'd changed. Now he just looked like a drowned rat in dry clothes.

            "What's going on?" Korra asked. "Will you tell me what's going on? Where'd you get those scratches?"

            "Opal."

            "What?"

            "Opal. I... I tried to convince her to stay here. I don't want her to come with us." Bolin spoke in weak, wavering tones. He didn't sound panicked, he sounded tired and unbelievably cold, but Korra knew better. "I don't want her to get hurt. I wanted her to stay safe, so I tried to get her to stay here. We had a fight. I just wanted her to stay here. I tried to convince her."

            "How?"

            "I scared her."

            Korra didn't know what to say, and she stammered for a while before forcing out, "How?"

            "I threatened her." The statement seemed to upset him more than anything else had so far. He tucked his hands beneath his arms and curled in tightly, like he was trying to disappear, and he stared wide-eyed at his knees. "I'm so horrible. I threatened her. I..."

            "And she scratched you?"

            Bolin's eyes dropped to the floor. He didn't acknowledge that Korra had asked him anything. Then he shook his head for a while and sat heavily back on the bed. "I don't want to stay here," he said, a little desperately. "I don't want to sleep here. I don't want to sleep alone. I'm a horrible person, but I don't want to sleep alone. Please. I don't want to stay here. I don't want to sleep here."

            He sounded frantic again, so Korra nodded. Something terrible had to have happened for Bolin to have gone so quiet and afraid. Normally his panics were violent and ugly, but this was so different. This was frightening.

            "Where do you want to go?"

            Bolin shook his head. "I'll sleep on the floor, but I don't want to sleep alone. And if I do anything stupid or try to do anything stupid I want you to stop me."

            "Stupid like what?"

            "Like trying to hit you," he said, "or trying to overpower you. Or trying to hit anyone. Or trying to overpower anyone." He gasped and swallowed hard. "I'm a monster. I need you to put me down if I get out of line."

            Korra didn't understand what he meant by that, but she had no real choice except to agree. She didn't want him to panic any more, and she knew he had to sleep, so she wrapped his arm around her shoulder again and walked him slowly back to her room, where she sat him on her bed.

            In the next half hour, Korra cleaned the scratches on his arm, bandaged them, and explained that she would fix them once she had access to healing waters. And then she sternly told him to lay down, and he did. He curled into his tiny ball and buried his head in his hands, trembled for a while longer, and then fell asleep.

            The only reason Korra knew he slept was because the shaking stopped.


	30. The Radio

            A very bad feeling sat in the pit of Korra's stomach that told her everything wasn't okay, and whenever she looked at Bolin sleeping on her bed, the feeling only got worse. He'd been panicking, that much was clear, but the way he'd looked and acted had been so far removed from every other time she'd seen him panicking that it unsettled her. Every other time the panic had been so intense that he'd barely been able to speak, let alone walk. But he'd talked and he'd made sense. He'd walked with her across the estate. And then he'd fallen asleep almost immediately upon putting his head on the pillow.

            Something awful had happened. Korra knew it. He didn't just panic on a whim. If he and Opal had had a fight that left him so thoroughly distressed, Korra couldn’t imagine how Opal must be faring. She figured it'd depend on who won the argument, and judging by the gashes on Bolin's arm, it seemed that Opal had come out on top.

            She still had to go check.

            Korra left her room, knocked gently on Asami's door, and pulled her along behind without bothering to explain what the rush was all about. Korra didn't want to talk right there. She didn't want to risk waking Bolin now he'd finally fallen asleep.

            They came to Opal's room shortly. Korra stood for a few seconds before knocking, seconds she spent catching her breath and steadying herself against the possibilities. Opal had won the fight. She had to have won, else Bolin wouldn't have been bleeding like that.

            Korra knocked, and for the second time that night, there came no answer from within. This time Korra didn't wait for a response. This time she wasn't going to take any chances. With one more unanswered knock, Korra opened the door.

            The first thing that came to her mind was, _oh, no_ , but she couldn't have gasped the words if she'd wanted to. Her throat closed the instant she saw Opal all curled up in the middle of the floor, and any hope that Opal had won the fight disappeared completely. Opal tightened in her ball and cried quiet tears that shook her whole body. It was like the sound of the door had frightened her.

            "What happened?" Asami didn't wait for any explanation before darting into the room and throwing herself down at Opal's side. "Opal, what happened?" She grabbed at Opal's wrists to try and gently uncurl her, but Opal yelped in pain and drew away. Asami looked to Korra with complete confusion.

            "Opal, we're not going to hurt you." Korra stepped into the room and closed the door gently. Then she joined Asami at Opal's side, put her hand on Opal's back, and breathed deep. "It's just me and Asami. What happened?"

            "I can't! He'll come back!"

            Asami gave Korra a look. It was a deadly, knowing look that said she was ready to stand up and march straight to Bolin's room to give him a piece of her mind. Except Asami didn't know that Bolin wasn't in his room. He was in Korra's room passed out on her bed.

            "What happened?" Korra prompted. "Opal, look at us. We're here to help."

Opal glanced meekly up. She looked like she’d been crying for days. Worse, when she raised            her head Korra could see clearly that the skin and muscles from her neck to her left shoulder were red and swollen and threatening to bruise the same as her wrist had done the night prior. Asami seemed to have seen it, too.

            "Opal, what happened?" Asami asked. It seemed to be all either of them could say.

            "I can't," Opal sniffled, stuttering with each heaving breath. "He'll find out. He'll hurt me."

            "What did he do?" Asami demanded.

            "I..." Opal shook her head and dropped her eyes low again. She sniffled and rubbed her nose with the back of her bruised wrist, and she grimaced at the contact. "I can't tell you! If he finds out I talked to you he's going to... He said he was going to..." She sobbed again. It was like she couldn't say the words.

            As gently as she could, Korra leaned forward to get a closer look at Opal's neck. It was bad, or at least it would be in a few hours. No doubt he'd grabbed her. He'd probably held her neck just as tight as he'd held her wrist the night prior.

            "He's not going to do anything," Asami said, "because I won't let him. Now tell me what happened or I'm going to go get your mom."

            Opal looked terrified by that prospect. She held her breath and stared at her knees, then wiped the tears from her eyes. "He grabbed me and he pushed me," Opal said, slightly           hysterical. "He pinned me to the wall."

"He pinned you to the wall?" Asami repeated dumbly. She clearly couldn't wrap her head around the matter. She'd barely been able to wrap her head around what had happened last night. "By your neck?"

            Opal nodded her head frantically. "I told him to leave, and he slammed the door and grabbed me and threw me against the wall, and then when I tried to get him off me he pinned me. I couldn't get away. I couldn't move. He had me by the wrist and he had me by the neck and no matter how hard I pulled I couldn’t get away." She paused and rubbed at her wrists like doing so would make the red marks go away. She examined them closely. "And I kept trying to get away from him, but I couldn't. He was too strong for me."

            Asami looked confused. "Slow down," she said. The anger had left her. "Slow down. So, he pinned you to the wall, and then?"

            "I managed to get him off me once. I airbent at him and knocked him down. I didn't want to hurt him. I'm afraid I hurt him and that's why he got so mad. I didn't want to do it but I couldn't get him off me. I thought if I hit him hard enough he'd stay down, so I tried to run, but he didn't stay down."

            "Okay. So, you tried to run. Then what?"

            Opals eyes went wide again, the same way Bolin’s had during his panic. Korra couldn't imagine Opal breaking down the same way Bolin had, but then again, she'd never have been able to imagine Bolin in such a state before she’d seen it herself.

            Opal frantically shook her head, then buried her face in her hands.

            "What did he do to you?" Asami asked. Between the angry glance she shot at Korra and the arm she wrapped tenderly around Opal's shoulders, it was clear whose side she was going to take in the matter regardless of any explanation. "Opal, what did he do?"

            Opal kept shaking her head. The crying had come back in full. "He said if I told anyone that next time he wouldn't let me go. He... He threatened me..."

            Suddenly Asami's eyes were wide, too. She blanched, and then she looked outraged. "Did he... Did he force you to..."

            Opal wailed.

            No way, Korra thought. There was absolutely no way in the world he could've done that, not with how weak and unstable he was. Not with how much he loved Opal. He said he'd just wanted to scare her. He just wanted her to stay home and stay safe. That's what he said, and he'd been so genuine about it.

            But then, he'd been acting more strangely than usual. His panic had been different than it had been before. It had looked like he'd scared himself. Considering what he'd already done to Opal in his blind rage, it seemed entirely possible that he might push farther. It wasn't out of the realm of possibility that he might've taken advantage of her. And his instability was just as much an explanation _for_ it as it was an explanation _against_ it. No one ever knew what he would or could do. Korra doubted very much that even Bolin knew what he could do.

            "Opal?" Korra asked tremulously. "Opal, did he?"

            She shook her head, but to Korra, that didn't mean much. It just meant that Opal was incapable of producing words. It increased Korra’s worry. If Opal was incapable of words, it was entirely likely that Bolin had done the unthinkable.

            "Opal, talk to us."

            "I can't!"

            Asami looked ready to stand up and march, but Korra put her hand on Asami's arm and placated her.

            "You can," Korra said. "We have to know what happened or we can't help you. Now," she took a very deep breath, "did he force himself on you?"

            Opal looked up, ashamed. "No. Not... He just..." She paused and looked back down. "He pushed me down, yeah. And he got on top of me. I thought he was going to do it... I was so scared he was going to... But... He just got on top of me."

            "He _what?_ " Asami roared.

            "He put me on my stomach," Opal said quietly. Her voice sat barely above a whisper. She sounded like a child being scolded. She sounded afraid, but Korra couldn't tell if she was afraid of Asami's anger or if she was afraid of remembering what Bolin had done. "He pushed me down on the floor on my stomach and he held me there. I was fighting him. I was trying hard to get away but he was too heavy. He sat on me. He straddled me. He... He pushed... I mean… He pressed down, he held me down. I was scared. I thought he was going to do it." She sniffled. "But in the end, he didn't _touch_ me, not the way I was afraid he was going to. Not the way you're thinking."

            "But he threatened to," Asami finished for her.

            She nodded, then she whimpered. "He didn’t say it. He said if I told anyone what he did, that next time he wouldn't get up."

            Korra had never seen Asami look so angry in her life. She sat quietly there staring holes through Opal, her brow furrowed and her eyes dangerously narrow. When Asami went to stand, Korra grabbed her hand and shook her head, then pulled her gently back down. Asami settled back in. The anger persisted in her features, but now she looked puzzled, too.

            "Why'd he do it?" Korra asked Opal. "Did he say why?"

            "He didn't want me to go with you," Opal sniffled. "He wants me to stay here."

            "Did he say why he wants you to stay?"

            "It doesn't matter _why_ he did it!" Asami cried. "There's absolutely no excuse for it!"

            Korra held up her hand to quiet Asami, but she never took her eyes off Opal. "Why?"

            Opal shook her head yet again. "He just said it was because he couldn't stand looking at me," she cried. "After he said that he just kept telling me that I wasn't going to come."

            Korra sighed and let go Asami's wrist, then folded her hands in her lap. "He was lying," she said. "I talked to him."

            Asami looked outraged again. "You _talked_ to him?"

            "Yeah," Korra replied, her regretful tone unaffected. "I went to check up on him like you and I agreed earlier," she looked at Asami, "but he wasn't in his room. Point is, I found him and I talked to him. That's how I knew to come in here. He told me that he and Opal had fought and that he'd been trying to convince her to stay here."

            "What?" Asami was incredulous. Opal looked terrified.

            "I don't think he meant you any harm," Korra said to Opal tenderly. "I don't think he wanted to hurt you. See, when I found him he was panicking again, and when I asked him what was wrong he admitted to threatening you--he didn't tell me how he’d done it or what he'd said--but he admitted to threatening you, and when I asked him why, he said that he didn't want you to get hurt. He wants you to stay here so you stay safe."

            Both Opal and Asami looked as though Korra had smacked them in the face. Then their expressions shifted, and while Opal's came to rest back in the realm of terror and hysteria, Asami's went to indignation.

            "You can't _possibly_ be taking his side," Asami said in a low rumble. "You can't."

            "All I'm saying is that we ought to give him a chance to explain himself before we--"

            "A chance to _explain_ himself?" Asami cried. "Are you kidding me right now? How can you take his side? How can you even consider excusing him?"

            Korra sat back on her heels, stunned by Asami's aggression. "Yes, he did the wrong thing. He was out of line. But..."

            "No! There's no _but_ about it! He knows better! A guy can't just throw his girlfriend onto the ground, jump on top of her, hold her down, and expect there not to be any consequence! He can’t make that sort of implication!"

            "Stop yelling at me," Korra argued. "Now listen to me. I know he was out of line, really, I do, but he's not himself! He hasn't been himself in a long, long time. He's not in a good place! He hasn't been!"

            "It's not an excuse!"

            "Stop yelling!" Opal shouted. "Stop!"

            Korra and Asami stopped dead and watched as Opal started crying anew. Then they looked at each other as she sobbed.

            Korra didn't know what to do, and now she was more conflicted than she'd been when they started. She hadn't had the chance to say what she needed: Yes, Bolin had been out of line and had been absolutely in the wrong with how he’d treated Opal, but they couldn't just abandon him. They couldn't just throw him out and leave him all alone. Someone had to stay with him to make sure he was okay because if they didn’t, he wouldn't take care of himself.  He’d neglect himself to death and he wouldn’t care in the slightest.

            "I still want to come," Opal whimpered when the tears died. "I want to come with you. I want to help."

            "Are you sure?" Asami asked. "Are you absolutely sure?"

            Opal nodded. "I'm sure. I want to come. I _have_ to now."

            "You don't have to," Asami said. "If you want to stay you can, and nobody will think any less of you."

            "No," Opal said. She looked at her hands and shook her head again. "I have to go. If I stay here after what Bolin did to me, he's going to think he won. If I stay here he's going to think that he can force me to do whatever he wants by overpowering me, and then he might try it again. But if I go, he'll know that he can't scare me into doing what he wants."

            Asami looked pleadingly at Korra, as though she wanted Korra to say something to change Opal's mind, but Korra didn't know what to say or what to do. She was caught up in her own conflicted thoughts. Opal was right: Bolin couldn't be left to think that he could force people to do things by using what little physical strength he had left. Someone had to let him know he was in the wrong. But at the same time, it was a difficult path to tread. If anyone scolded Bolin too seriously they would alienate him and he'd isolate himself again, and that would only make things worse.

            Maybe Opal was right. Maybe she needed to go with them, if only to send a message.

            "What if we went," Asami suggested, "and left Bo here."

            "Absolutely not," Korra snapped.

            Asami looked offended. "Why? He's not going to do us any good. He's weak and he's completely insane. If we take him along and he loses his mind--more than he's already lost it--he could get us all killed. If he blows up and yells at us when we're trying to keep quiet? If he loses control of his bending?"

            Korra shook her head. Maybe he was insane, but he certainly wasn’t weak. He’d proven that well enough. "We're not leaving him here. That would be cruel, I don't care how far gone he is. We can't tell him that he's got to stay here while we go rescue his brother. He feels worthless enough as it is--he _told me_ that he feels that way--so if we make him stay here because we're worried he'll screw up, that'll just make it worse. We've got to give him a reason to keep going."

            "I can't believe you're taking his side," Asami mumbled. She was angry.

            "Someone has to!" Korra cried, exasperated. "Someone's got to stick up for him! You make it sound like this is all black and white, Asami, and it's not! There's no right or wrong here, everything is... It's all gray! He's done terrible things, but he does them for the right reasons. His heart is in the right place, he just doesn't know how to--"

            "Stop, Korra," Asami said. "Stop. If you're going to take his side, get out."

            "It's not about taking sides!"

            "Yeah, it is. Now leave."

            Korra was stunned and hurt. And on one hand she could understand Asami's outrage, on the one hand she shared in Asami’s outrage, but on the other, they had to see reason. "Asami, come on. You have to--"

            "Go, Korra. I'll stay here and make sure Opal is okay. I’ll stay with her tonight and be sure she’s safe. If you're so concerned about Bolin maybe you should go check in on him and make sure he’s not threatening anyone else."

            "Opal, you understand, right?" Korra pleaded. "I know he hurt you and I know he scared you. But you hurt him, too. You have to understand he means..."

            Asami pulled Opal into a warm embrace and glared daggers at Korra. "Go."

            Korra wanted to cry. The tone in Asami's voice said that there'd be no reasoning with her. If Asami wouldn't listen, there was no use trying, so Korra stood and left.

            It wasn't the first time she'd been stuck in the gray area between right and wrong. As the Avatar, she'd occupied that place quite often. She'd wrestled with awful decisions and been forced to make choices that could, and often did, impact the whole of the world. But the moral dilemmas had never hit so close to home. She'd always been able to distance herself by remembering she had a close-knit group of friends to return to, who would support her even if the decision she made was unpopular. Korra couldn't be sure she had that anymore. The whole group was coming unraveled.

            Even in the face of that, Korra knew what she had to do. She'd seen both sides, and both sides were ugly and full of stupid decisions and violent actions and a complete lack of logic. Opal had hit Bolin first and that had set him off. He'd felt like she'd betrayed him, and in a certain way, she had. But for him to turn around and threaten her the way he did was completely wrong. For him to manhandle her and bruise her and throw her around was disgusting.

            The only differences between them, Korra supposed, were that Opal had a strong support system and the benefit of a fully functioning brain. Bolin had neither. At some point since the whole debacle started, he'd managed to cut holes through every link in his safety net so that now he needed it, he was just falling through. He couldn't see that truth for himself, either, and he probably wouldn't believe anyone if they told him. He was too caught up thinking that everyone had some vendetta against him to see the logic. He was too caught up in his own anger and paranoia to understand that things existed beyond them. He just couldn't _think_. He couldn’t process the truth even if he knew what it was.

            As Korra walked back to her room, she wondered if Bolin was still sleeping in the same position in which she'd left him, all curled up and small looking with his face to the wall. She wondered what he was dreaming about or if he was dreaming at all. She wondered if he was still being haunted by the nightmares he'd told her about or if some entirely different but equally horrifying visions had come to his mind. She wondered how much of his brainlessness was him getting hung up on what he'd seen in his sleep, or if his agitation had been caused by the dreams. Maybe it was because he'd not been sleeping.

            Korra had never seen evidence of that. The theory seemed farfetched at best. Everything that was wrong with Bolin started the minute he'd woke after the collapse. Everything from the anger to the panic to the impulsiveness was caused by something that had happened there, but Korra didn't know what it was. She didn’t know if it was all in his head or if something had scrambled his brain and quite literally _broken_ his ability to think.

            The point was that it wasn't entirely his fault. It couldn’t be.

            Korra had been around for a few blowouts now, and every time they happened, whether Bolin's reaction was mild or severe, he always regretted it. As much as everyone would've argued to the contrary, Bolin had never been stupid, not even before, and while he might not have known what he was doing while he was yelling and hitting and generally breaking down, he was certainly capable of feeling sorry for it after the fact. It was like when he exploded he blanked out, like his brain shut off completely, and when he calmed, everything he'd done and everything he'd said in his anger dropped back down on him at once.

            There was no doubt in Korra's mind that he was being harder on himself than anyone else could've ever hoped to be. He’d always been that way, even before the accident, even if he never said anything about it. There was no doubt that he was scaring himself just as much as he was scaring everybody else, and if everyone abandoned him now because he'd blindly stumbled across some arbitrary line with Opal, Bolin would never come back. He'd beat himself up even more, and he'd blame himself for impulses that he might not have been able to control at all. He'd isolate himself, he'd neglect himself, and then he'd be sick for the rest of his life, however long he decided to let it last.

            Korra stopped outside her door at an impasse. She could let him sleep and deal with the fallout from Opal tomorrow, when Opal would undoubtedly show up with her bag ready to depart for Baihe Island, or she could wake him up and prepare him for it first. She certainly wanted to let the issue die, but it wouldn’t be right to let him sleep through it all to be blindsided later. She didn't want to wake him, either. She'd been with him the last two nights running, and he hadn't slept at all. He needed to rest. He needed to get his mind back, and there would be no way to do that if he never slept.

            At a loss, Korra sighed and opened the door.

            "We need to talk."

            Korra jumped. She hadn't expected Bolin to be awake or sitting up. She hadn't expected him to speak. On the bright side, it meant she wouldn't have to make the decision on whether to wake him.

            "Are you okay?" Korra replied as normally as she could. She hoped to make herself sound like she hadn't just seen the results of his latest eruption. She sat on the bed at his feet and leaned against the wall. "You didn't sleep very long."

            Bolin hung his head and sighed. "Nightmare," he said plainly, as if it would explain everything. He wrapped his arms around himself as though he was grabbing at a stitch in his side, then poked gently at his ribs. Korra remembered what Opal had said about airbending at him, and she wondered if that was the cause.

            "Are you hungry?"

            Bolin shook his head, but didn't say anything.

            "Are you saying that because you're actually not hungry or because you're being stubborn?"

            He stayed silent for a while, offering no response. But then he peeked up sheepishly with a coy grin that made it obvious he'd been caught in a lie. "Nothing gets past you, does it?"

            She couldn't tell if he was being sarcastic or not. She rarely could anymore. It confused her. He’d never been sarcastic before, but now it seemed to be the only thing he could be. Worse, the sly look Bolin had given her set the flutter in her stomach for the first time since he'd left Air Temple Island, and that confused her more. She was supposed to be angry at him. He'd done a horrible, horrible thing. She should've been disgusted. She should’ve been outraged. But she wasn’t. She was just conflicted.

            Bolin’s grin faded quickly enough. His face went flat and expressionless again, and he sighed. "I'm guessing you went to see Opal."

            "Yeah, I did."

            "Was she okay?"

            "Not really, no."

            "I really screwed up," Bolin said. Korra expected the panic to come on again, but it didn't. He kept his head low and spoke all quiet and controlled. If anything, he sounded like he was upset with himself, but the tone was so understated that Korra couldn't tell if he was sad or angry. "I really did. I know I did. I just don't know why I did it. I went over there with every intention of _talking_ to her, and then..." He shook his head slowly. "I don't know what happened. I'm tired of not knowing what's happening."

            "I don't know what you want me to say," Korra said. She couldn't stand making eye contact with him. She felt guilty, somehow, because she should have been scolding him for hurting Opal so badly but she was too nervous to do so. "I'm sorry you don't understand."

            "Not much else you can say," Bolin said evenly. "She stuck up for herself. She airbent at me." He shrugged. "It's sore and kind of hard to breathe, if I'm honest."

            Korra felt her face screw up, but Bolin didn't give her a chance to say anything before he went on.

            "Look, Korra, I've been thinking a lot last night and today, and it's been hard for reasons outside of... You know... My head... I've been arguing with myself since I fought with Opal, and at first I thought maybe I should stay home. I embarrassed myself. You guys can't trust me. Even if I wasn’t a horrifying mess, I know it’s just as likely that I’ll hold you guys back as it is that I’ll actually be helpful, and if I lose control again I'll put you in danger. But I have to go, and I have to do my best to keep myself in check because if you guys went to get Mako and I wasn't there, it'd make me just as guilty of abandoning him as he is of abandoning us."

            "What are you talking about?"

            Bolin looked up, a frustrated furrow to his brow. "Did it not come out right?"

            Korra shook her head. She didn't know if it had or not. If she'd heard him right, it sounded like he was accusing Mako of _abandoning_ them when the truth of the matter was that he'd been kidnapped. Had she missed something?

            With a groan of frustration, Bolin lay back down and rubbed at his forehead, then let his arms fall limp and stared at the ceiling. He was quiet and thoughtful looking for a long time. "Mako was in Republic City. He could've escaped. I mean, he could have stayed there, is what I mean. If he'd really wanted to, he could've gone to Air Temple Island or stayed with Beifong. But he didn't. He went back. He chose the people who hurt him and kidnapped him over us. And yeah, I want him to come home as much as anyone else, but..." Bolin sighed and shook his head weakly. "He could've come home. Why wouldn't he come home?"

            "I think you might be looking at it the wrong way."

            "Funny," Bolin said, deadpan. He didn't look at her, but Korra knew he wasn't sincere. There was nothing about him that said anything was funny in the slightest. "You say that like I can look at it any other way. I _can't_. I _tried_. I used to be able to, but I can't do it anymore. I can't look at things from someone else's point of view, and I don't know why. I can't empathize." He paused for a moment like what he'd said was surprising. "Wow, that's... That's really messed up."

            That statement was the closest Bolin had sounded to himself in a long, long time. Korra was just sad it had happened in such a depressing context.

            "I can't do it, that's the point," Bolin said after a second, during which Korra imagined he'd been reflecting on what he'd said. "I wish I knew how to describe what's going on, but I don't know how to do that either. Even if I could explain, it wouldn't excuse what I've been doing." He stopped and looked to Korra. It seemed to her like he was expecting some kind of admonishment, but she wasn't going to give it. Not right now. Bolin lay back and resumed staring at the ceiling, a contemplative look about him.

            "You ever have a bad radio?" he asked. "One where no matter what you do you can't get any reception?"

            Korra shrugged, confused by Bolin's sudden change in subject. How appropriate for such a jarring transition to come while he was talking about his damaged mind. "Sometimes the reception is bad in the south," she said. "Why?"

            "It's like a really bad radio," Bolin said slowly, like he was thinking a little too hard, "where all you get is static no matter how much time you spend fine-tuning. Once in a while, you hear something come through, right? If it's not too cloudy and there's not a building in the way or like a tree or something, you get little bits and pieces of _something_ through the noise, but it's really distorted. It's so distorted that you can only pick up a word now and then and nothing else. Every station is all fuzzy like that except for one that comes through loud and clear, and it's the worst station you've ever stopped on. It plays the same two songs over and over and over, and they're songs you hate. Like, it's so bad you'd rather just have the static, but after a while the static drives you crazy and you have to go to the clear station just to get some relief. That's my brain, Korra. That's it. My brain is like a bad radio and all the things I can normally do and feel are just fuzzy and broken up and so distorted that I can't even tell if what I _think_ is coming through is what's really coming through. Never mind trying to get any of that out of my stupid mouth while it’s actually happening. The only thing I can feel clearly is anger. That's it. That’s the only thing I can understand. And sometimes I go there without me ever meaning to. It's like there's some weird thing in my head that says, _Oh, the wind changed direction? Let's get mad_. It's so unpredictable." He sighed deeply. "See? I'm getting mad just _thinking_ about getting mad."

            It was a brilliant comparison, Korra thought. It was clear and to the point and did a decent job of explaining, and she wanted to provide the compliment. He probably wouldn't accept it if she paid it, though, and now that he'd started talking it seemed that Bolin wouldn't stop. He'd gotten caught up in his rambling explanation, and that wasn't necessarily a bad thing. At least he was talking instead of hitting.

            "I just can't control it," he continued. "I'm stuck and I can't get unstuck. And the worst part of the whole thing is that I _know_ things are wrong. I can _feel_ that things are wrong. I can feel it in myself and I can feel it in you guys, but I can't explain it and I can't stop it. I couldn't tell you what kind of thinking led me to threatening Opal like I did. I just wanted to talk, but I'm stuck in this stupid loop where all I do is get mad, and then I freak out, and then I panic, and then I get mad at myself for all of it and then I freak out again and then I panic again. When it's all said and done, I can't remember what happened because the memory is just a big jumble of blurry everything and my stupid brain can't get around it. Like, when I yell at you? I don't know what I'm doing. Words are just falling out of me and I'm all angry and it just builds and builds and builds and I end up lashing out at the first person that says something I don't like. And it's not even like you have to say things that are _offensive_ to set me off. You could tell me that you don't like the color of my shirt or that it's going to rain on Tuesday, and if I'm in the wrong part of the cycle I'm liable to knock your face in."

            Korra wanted to say something, but all that came out of her was a deep sigh. "Bolin..."

            "No," he interrupted, agitated now, "don't talk. Just don't. I'm getting this out if it's the last thing I do because I'm tired of everyone I care about thinking I'm some kind of freak or monster or brain-dead idiot, okay?"

            "You're not a freak or a monster or a brain-dead idiot," Korra said placatingly.

            Bolin sat up now, propped himself on his elbows and stared at her with narrow eyes. He hadn't yet reached the point where his anger was scary, but he was approaching it fast. "Korra, I need you to listen to me, and I need you to understand something. Okay?"

            She nodded.

            " _I'm a dangerous person_." He said the words deliberately and with full, unblinking eye contact. He'd clearly been thinking about it for a long time. "I didn't used to be, right? Well, I am now. I'm not a person that other people should be around. If I was in your position right now I'd be terrified. If you flew off the handle every two minutes and hit the people you love and threatened to _hurt them in ways they can't possibly imagine_ , I'd be absolutely terrified of you. If you’d done half the things that I’ve done lately, I wouldn't be sitting here all calm-like listening to you dump all your problems on my shoulders like it might actually help!" He stopped abruptly and shot a shifty glance down. He'd surprised himself again, and as if in resignation he fell back against the pillow and clapped his hands over his eyes. It seemed to have become a default position.

            "You okay?"

            "No."

            "Can I help?"

            Korra knew he'd shaken his head by the movement of his arms, and when he spoke his voice had gone weak. "When we're done with all this, I'm going to leave. Once Mako is back safe with you guys, I'm going to leave."

            "What are you talking about?"

            "I don't want to be around you anymore. I don't want to be around any of you, not you and not Opal and not Asami and definitely not Su. Once we're done with all of this, I never want to see any of you ever again. I hate you. I really do. All of you. And it's funny because I didn't used to hate you and I don’t know why it changed. I hate you now, though. Whenever I think about all of you I just get all worked up, and I don't know why. And then you guys try to control the things I do and don't do, and I know you're doing it because you care, but you're limiting me. You make me stay in bed and you make me try when all I want to do is give up, and I'm tired of all of that. So once Mako is back here, I'm done. I'm going to wash my hands of the whole mess and move on. I have to get better, and I'm never going to get better as long as you people are forcing me to do things that I don't want to do and couldn't do even if I wanted to."

            "You know," Korra said tenderly, "I think you're limiting yourself. I don’t think it’s us doing that to you."

            Bolin laughed sadly. "Oh, now we're going to do the Avatar philosophy thing?"

            "No."

            "Then what?" He'd snapped the question. Korra could tell the anger was building. The anger would be dangerous soon. "What are we doing here?"

            "I'm trying to get you to forgive yourself a little bit," Korra said. "I know you're upset because of what happened with Opal, and I can't blame you for that. You scared the life out of her, and I think you know that. Maybe you don't, I don't know. She thought you were going to rape her. I know you didn't intend it, but that's what she thought. I’m trying to convince you to allow yourself a little bit of grace, at least enough to admit that you messed up and try to fix it."

            When Korra said the words, she knew that one of two things would happen: He would either start yelling at her--maybe he would try to hit her--or he would turn everything inward and start attacking himself. Either way, she felt certain that he'd erupt. But he didn't. He just shook his head and drew a shuddering breath that told Korra that he was about to burst into tears.

            Bolin lay there with his hands clamped over his face and shook with the effort of holding in whatever it was that was about to come out of him, but eventually it came to be too much, and he broke the same way Opal had done.

            Korra didn't know what to do. She wanted to run away and pretend none of this had ever happened, but there was no way it would work. She'd never be able to get this out of her head. Another part of her wanted to stay there and watch while Bolin's unpredictable emotions ran their course, to see if what he’d said about _the loop_ bore any credence, but watching it felt somehow dirty like she was intruding on him. Yet another part wanted to comfort him, but she didn't know how. She hesitated to be close to him for so many reasons. She'd limited her interactions with him so carefully for so long that she wasn't sure what an appropriate measure would look like.

            She put her hand on his knee. It was the best she could muster. It was all her limited courage would allow her to do. Korra found it a little funny in the moment, how she'd faced all manner of catastrophic circumstances and dealt with them head on, but now she was faced with the prospect of comforting one of her closest friends, she couldn't. She didn’t even know _why_ she couldn’t, because there were too many feelings in her mind working against each other.

            "I just wanted her to stay here," Bolin cried in a surprisingly strong voice. "I just wanted her to be safe. And I couldn't think of anything that I could do to make her listen to me! I thought maybe if she was scared enough of me she wouldn't want to be around me and she'd stay home! She didn't listen to me the last time I tried to explain myself, when it came to what happened between you and me, so why would she listen now? _Words won’t work!_ Then she hit me and then I threw her and..." He shook his head frantically. "It's all wrong, Korra! I would never do anything to hurt Opal, except I _have_ , and I don't know why I did it! I don't know how it happened!"

            Korra didn't have the heart to tell him that Opal had continued to insist that she come along, even after what Bolin had done to her. She wondered what the dynamic would be like and whether things would ever be the same again. Certainly, the two of them would never reconcile. How could they? Even if Bolin could manage to forgive Opal her transgression, there was no way Opal would ever be able to forgive Bolin for what he'd done to her, or what he'd threatened to do, or what she thought he was threatening to do. The trust was gone. He’d obliterated it completely, and in the worst way possible. Even if he found it in himself to trust her and even if he still loved her the way he kept saying he did, Opal would never reciprocate.

            "And you know what's the worst part, Korra? The worst of it all? I _knew_ what I was doing. I wasn't mad. I was scared and upset and desperate, but I wasn't mad. When I threatened her I did it with as clear a mind as I've done anything in a long time because I knew that I had to scare her to get her to stay home. It was the only way to keep her safe, because all of us are going to run into the middle of a stupid spider-wasp nest, smack it with a stick, and expect to come out alive. It's not going to happen! We're going to die in there, Korra, I know it." He paused and dropped his arms above his head again, apparently exhausted. "You know, if I'd just stood my ground before Mako left and told him it was a stupid idea to go keep working for Wu, he wouldn't be in this mess and I wouldn't be in this mess and everything would be the same way it always was. And never mind Mako--that doesn't matter. If I'd have stopped being stubborn for five minutes and asked for help to get over the fact that I thought he was dead, I wouldn't be the mess I am right now. Let's be honest, this is my fault. It's all my fault because I freaked out and lost my mind and didn't take care of myself and lost sleep and was tired and then got attacked and couldn't defend myself and fell to what _should've_ been my death. And I can’t even do that right because apparently I’m just too stubborn to die!"

            There was nothing Korra could do to help, not now. Just as she worried he might, Bolin had turned his anger inward. He was caught up in the loop again and now all there was to do was let it die down in its own time and deal with the fallout on the other side.

            At least he hadn't hit her. At least he'd just been talking.

            He let out the sad laugh again, except this time it had weakened. "I used to be an idiot on purpose because I thought it made people feel better, right? Now I'm an idiot without ever meaning to be, and there's no way I'm ever going to be able to go back. I've lost everything because I'm too stupid to make good decisions. All of this is my fault. I don’t know how to fix it, and even if I did, I don’t know that I _could._ "

            Bolin didn't say anything for a long, long time, and Korra didn't say anything either. She didn’t know what to say, and wasn’t sure she’d be able to speak anyway. When he finally broke the silence, he spoke so quietly that Korra wasn't sure that he'd said anything at all.

            "I'm sorry," he said. "I'm sorry about everything."

            "Stop saying you're sorry about everything. I'm not the one you need to be apologizing to. I know it isn't all your fault."

            "You know I'd never do that to you girls, right?" he said tentatively. His voice quivered and he didn’t look at her. "I never would. I never _could_. The parts just don't work that way, Korra, if someone's crying at me they don't work _at all_."

            Korra stared at him, dumbfounded. She hadn't expected him to address the issue head on like this.

            "You know the first time Opal and I slept together, she started crying halfway through and it all just _stopped_. I don't know why she did it, but she started crying and I couldn't have finished if I wanted to... And I _wanted_ to, you have no idea. But once she started crying it was like someone flipped a switch and everything was just gone. I can't imagine how she thinks I'd ever be able to... To rape her... I mean... She's the one who tells _me_ what to do, not the other way around. She’s the one with the control!"

            Korra felt the blood rushing to her face and a strange, embarrassed pressure building in her head. What was she supposed to say to that? She didn't need to know about Bolin and Opal's exploits together, but here he was laying everything out as plain as day, without any reservation at all. It was like he thought talking about it wasn't a big deal.

            Was it?

            "And now I'm keeping you up," Bolin continued. He hadn't stopped talking, but Korra hadn't heard what he'd been saying. "And I'm clearly making you uncomfortable."

            "I'm not worried about it," Korra replied blandly. "You need to talk."

            "Well I _am_ worried about it. You need to sleep. We’re going to be busy tomorrow. And it's going to be bad, especially if I run into anyone that's not you. Asami has to know what I did. You know what I did. I'd be really surprised if Su doesn't know at this point." Bolin sighed and rubbed his eyes with the backs of his hands. He'd sounded a little overwhelmed by the idea of speaking with anyone. "Why don't you just lay down and sleep. I'll move. I have to go anyway. I can’t stay here. I need to be by myself."

            A pang of guilt hit Korra straight in the chest when Bolin sat up. He looked so tired. He looked sick, like he had the day they’d gone to see the combustion bender. She tried to number the hours of sleep he'd gotten, but couldn't. All she knew was that it wasn't much, and he’d eaten even less.

            "No," Korra said, "it's okay. You can stay here."

            "It's your bed. You can sleep on it. I'll go back to my room and--"

            "You said earlier that you don't want to sleep alone. I’m not letting you back out of that now."

            Bolin's glance shifted downward, except this time it wasn't coy or sly at all. It was a look of shame. "Yeah. I know what I said."

            "You're staying in here. If it's like you said and you're afraid of what's going to happen, you're staying here. Now lay down."

            "But you--"

            " _Lay down_."

            He did. He turned his back to her, and he wrapped his arms around his middle and stared at the wall sleepily. Then she laid down beside him, her back to his, and sighed. He was right. Tomorrow was going to come sooner than she wanted it to, and once they’d set off for Omashu there’d be little rest until they returned. This might be the last opportunity Korra would have to sleep soundly in a while, and it already seemed like half the night was gone.

            "Go to sleep," she commanded.

            "You're not worried I'm going to do something to you?"

            "You don't have a reason to."

            "I don’t seem to need a reason."

            "Look, Bolin," Korra said tersely, "I'm going to say this once, so listen. I'm lying beside you and I'm about to go to sleep, yeah? If you wanted to do anything to me at all you could, and I'd be completely powerless to stop it, Avatar or not, because I'd be _unconscious_. But here I am. And here you are. You can hate me as much as you want, but I'm the only person you haven't roughed up or completely alienated, and that's just because I've got a thick skin. I'm about the only person you've got left, and if you're as sad and sorry and regretful as you keep saying you are, you're not going to do anything to me except open up a little too much about you and Opal's sex life and maybe awkwardly hug me whenever you think you screwed up and can’t find the words to apologize. We’ve done this before."

            It seemed Bolin didn't know what to say, but she could feel the muscles in his back tense against her own. She'd struck a nerve, somehow. Then she felt him sigh.

            "You're completely right," he said sleepily. Then he rolled onto his back and folded his hands behind his head. "I won't do anything, because even if I don't like you, you have my back. I don’t know why. I don’t deserve it. And…” He paused, contemplative. “And it’s nice that you’re here, even if you’re scared of me. It makes me feel like I'm not as big of a monster as I thought I was."

            "Good night," Korra said firmly.

            “No,” Bolin replied weakly. “It’s not.”


	31. Decisions

            Bolin was getting tired of dreaming. He was getting tired of seeing the same horrifying things over and over again and not knowing what they meant. He was tired of waking up in blind panic, of waking up without a sense of reality, and spending his days stuck working through ideas that could mean nothing or everything. He was tired of trying to make connections, because making the connections made him remember, and nothing had happened in the last five or six weeks that he could ever have wanted to remember.

            The worst of it was that the dreams had taken on an aspect of reality that they hadn't contained before. The lava ocean had been terrifying, yes, but whenever Bolin had dreamed about it he'd awakened and, after his initial terror, had been able to dismiss it as a fantastical manifestation of worry. He'd been able to rationalize through it by reminding himself that there was no way he could produce the amount of lava that had engulfed the world in his dreams, and even if there was such a way, he'd never have turned it against another person. He used lavabending for crowd control, not for offense, so the odds of someone being burned were relatively low. The odds of someone sinking slowly into a pit of the stuff were lower still.

            But then his dreams had stopped being so fantastical. He'd dreamed about his night with Korra. He'd dreamed about the conversations he'd had with Tenzin and Lin while he'd been laid up in the hospital. He'd dreamed about the combustion bender attacking him. All those things had really happened, and Bolin had finally managed to recognize the dreaming as his wounded memory trying to repair itself. But now he'd begun dreaming of the moment the building collapsed on him, and no matter how hard he worked to convince himself that the memory wasn't real and couldn’t hurt him, he woke violently afraid. No matter how much he told himself it was just a horrible dream, he still woke with fear pinning him to the bed.

            It happened the same way every time. He fought to stay awake. He failed. He dreamed. He woke. He panicked. It was as though his mind in sleep had fallen into a cycle similar to his mind when awake, except instead of constant anger, he was plagued by constant terror.

            So Bolin stayed awake, even after Korra dozed beside him and her quiet breathing threatened to lull him to sleep. He lay there staring at the ceiling, occupying himself with whatever thoughts would keep his mind alert. He thought about the plan to rescue Mako, and that made him scared. He thought about the fights he'd had with Opal and how badly his chest hurt because of her airbending at him, and that made him ashamed. He thought about how everyone had lied to him, and that made him angry. Worst of all, Bolin couldn't decide which of those thoughts he'd rather concentrate on: He didn't want to concentrate on any of them. They were too negative, so he turned his thoughts inward. He needed a plan.

            For the first time since the idea popped into his head two nights ago, Bolin seriously contemplated leaving. He'd proven now how dangerous he was, both for himself and others, and he knew that the best way to alleviate the constant fear of lashing out would be to permanently remove himself from the equation.

            He sighed and pressed his hands against his forehead. Every time he considered leaving Zaofu his mind flooded with horrible thoughts. Every time he considered it, his brain hung up and rolled through the same series of ideas: He should have died in the collapse. He should have died the day he'd visited the combustion bender. He should have found a place to jump. He should have left when Korra begged him to stay. He never should have come here.

            Things would've been easier if he'd just died. If he'd died, everything wouldn't have gotten so far out of control and he wouldn't have become such a burden. If he'd died, Opal wouldn't think he was a monster and he wouldn't have hit Su and he'd never have kissed Korra and otherwise ruined what few relationships he'd managed to establish. But he'd lived, and every time he thought about that he hated himself a little bit more because now the option to die was gone forever. Too many people were watching him too closely. He'd never be able to slip off and take care of things quietly, and he wasn’t sure he still had the resolve to follow through.

            Yet here he was, about to waltz into the heart of enemy territory to save his brother.

            It was perfect.

            Bolin shook his head as if to drive the idea out. He didn't want to be thinking like that. He had to stop thinking like that. He'd never get better if he kept thinking like that. If he died, his friends would be sad. If he died, he'd never pay back the people who'd destroyed his brain. If he died, he'd never get to see Mako again.

            But maybe that wasn't such a bad thing. Whenever Bolin thought about seeing Mako his stomach turned in knots and his face grew hot with embarrassment. His eyes grew hot, too, and when he rubbed at them with the backs of his hands he felt the moisture starting to collect. He hated it. He hated the idea that Mako would come home and see him in such a sorry state. He could take embarrassing himself in front of the girls; he'd already done that enough times that it seemed not to matter anymore. He'd fainted in front of them and panicked in front of them and he was pretty sure that he'd cried in front of all of them, too. But Mako? Bolin couldn't imagine doing any of those things in front of Mako, and the mere thought of it had the anxiety welling up inside him again. He didn't want Mako to see him like this.

            Bolin drew a deep, painful breath to stop the panic. If he was very lucky and very careful, Mako wouldn't _have_ to see him like this. If he measured himself, he could save his brother and avoid facing the inevitable embarrassment that would come when Mako found out exactly how stupid he'd gotten. If he took care, he could save himself the effort of explaining his condition and making excuses for his behavior.

            The last time it had taken four days and a moderate level of exertion to make him collapse, and that had been on so many full nights of sleep--or almost full nights. Now it'd been what...three days? If they left when Korra said they would, it would be at least another three or four before they arrived at Baihe Island.

            The idea of so many days without food seemed impossible, particularly when coupled with his lack of sleep. And he didn't want to collapse before they'd gotten Mako out. In a perfect world, Bolin imagined that they'd get Mako away from wherever he was at, put him in Oogi's basket, and Bolin would crumple right then and there. Or maybe they'd be chased--certainly there would be some fighting--and as Korra and Asami worked valiantly to provide Mako with assistance, Bolin would fall. He wouldn't be able to run. He wouldn't be able to bend. He wouldn't be able to protect himself, and even if he could he'd have no stamina. He wouldn't keep up for long. He'd run out of gas and then he'd be hit by some crazy firebending nut job and if he wasn't killed on the spot he'd die from the injury and if he wasn't killed by the injury then he would just give up. If they tried to force him to heal the same way as they had done before, he'd just _leave_. He didn't know where he'd go, but he'd go.

            The decision was made. He'd either die or he'd walk out on them all, and there was definitely an order of preference.

            Again, Bolin shook his head to clear the thoughts away. His mind was running loose and the terrifying thoughts had snowballed again. It happened every single time. Every time he thought about anything his mind found some way to distort it. Every time, he found some way to make everything about how he should have died and how he didn't deserve to live and how he should've just offed himself when he had the chance. It was like something had been hard-wired into his brain that led every thought to the same grisly end.

            He hated that, too, and he hated that he hated it, but everything seemed to exist in one disgusting loop that always took him back to hating everyone and everything around him and wishing he was dead. It was inevitable, and the feelings only seemed to grow stronger with time.

            Wasn't that the worst part? That everything always seemed to go downhill? That everything always seemed to get worse? There had been a couple days where he hadn't altogether regretted his existence, it was true. He'd been over the moon when he'd managed to lava whip those obsidian shards into the tree. But since then there'd been nothing, and from a practical standpoint, even the lava whip was useless. Sure, it looked cool, it was a nice party trick, but he'd never use it in a fight. At best, the skill was a distraction and nothing more. If he launched something that potent at a person, they'd absolutely be killed, and it wouldn't be a pretty death, either. It seemed to Bolin that all he was really good for anymore was destroying things and hurting people.

            Good thing he was about to run into a place where destroying things and hurting people was effectively required.

            Bolin settled. He'd stay in the game for a little while longer, just long enough to see to it that Mako was rescued safely and the girls escaped Baihe Island in one piece. He'd make just enough effort to keep himself awake and alive until Mako was rescued and to keep everyone off his back about it, and then all bets would be off. He'd eat, but just enough.        He'd sleep, but just enough. At least that way he'd be weak. At least that way if Korra or Asami made him angry before his plan could come to fruition, he wouldn't be able to hurt them.

            For a while Bolin lay there, satisfied with the kernel of his plan. He took comfort in knowing that he wouldn't have to suffer himself much longer, and he took more comfort still in knowing that no one else would have to suffer him much longer, either. If he didn’t die, he would leave, and though he’d be stuck with himself, he wouldn’t bother anyone else.

            As he thought on the matter, the plan began to blossom a bit: New ideas came to mind that might make the transition a little easier. He'd eat once a day, less and less until he stopped. That would keep him on his feet and it would give him somewhere that he could deflect if anyone called him on starving. He would volunteer to take the night watch, and then sleep during the days while they traveled. That would limit his interactions with Korra and Asami, and it might make his departure a bit less painful.

            Bolin wanted to laugh at that idea. The only one who might find pain in his death was him. Everyone else would be relieved by it. And by the time he might regret his decision or get too scared to follow through he'd be too far gone to turn back and it wouldn't matter anyway.

            He thought on the matter for a while, wondering what death would feel like and if he would think and whether souls outside of the Avatar's were reincarnated. He wondered if he'd recognize it even if it was. He tried to compare death to the times he'd fainted before, how there was consciousness and then nothing until he regained consciousness, and he tried to imagine the _nothing_ lasting for eternity. He tried to imagine the possibility of complete nonexistence, and the panic set in so hard and so fast that he bolted upright without ever meaning to, his muscles all tight and shaky and his breath coming in huge, painful, desperate gulps. Overcome, he dropped his head into his hands and worked to push all the pain and panic back in.

            "Bo?"

            He wanted to swear but couldn't force the word out. He couldn't even think of the word. Between the pain in his chest and the panic in his gut, he couldn’t think at all. The last thing he needed was for Korra to wake up and see him like this again, but he knew it would've been a miracle for her to have remained asleep after he'd jerked so violently.

            As soon as she'd said his name, Korra sat up, and Bolin could feel her. She was nervous, and understandably so, but there was some strange sensation beneath that which he couldn't identify. It felt the way Su had felt when she'd watched him fall apart, but it was altogether different. It was a sense of calm in the face of his panic, a sense of knowing what to do and understanding that things would be okay in the end. Bolin never could have articulated it, but the feeling gave him a tiny bit of comfort.

            Then Korra's arm was around his shoulders and she spoke to him quietly, her voice just above a whisper. She rubbed at his arms and squeezed his shoulder, and it hurt, too.

            "What happened?" she asked. "Did you have another dream?"

            He was sick of people asking him if he'd been dreaming. Maybe it had been a mistake for him to tell people that he'd been having nightmares to begin with. Maybe it had been a mistake to tell anyone anything at all.

            All he could do was gasp and shiver and try as hard as he could to stop himself thinking about oblivion.

            Korra didn't seem to mind that he didn't speak to her. It was a common thread that ran amongst the lot of them, how they would let him be silent and move along from question to question without getting a response. Bolin wondered if the girls had talked about this. He wondered if Su had coached them on how to deal with his panics, especially when they got out of control. Maybe he'd fallen apart in front of Korra so much that she knew how to handle it. Or maybe it was just some weird feminine instinct that forced them into comforting someone who didn't deserve it and didn't want to accept it.

            If there was ever a bright side to the panic attacks, it was that they left him utterly exhausted, and now was no exception. Over time and with Korra's whispered coaching, the violence in his shivering diminished until all that was left was the slightest tremble in his hands and the occasional remnant quiver that ran from his head to his toes like a chill. His breaths slowed and deepened such that the wild, frantic panting was replaced by deep, searing breaths of exertion, the same kind of breaths he might've taken after a long, draining pro-bending match.

            The pain didn’t stop, but somehow the thoughts did.

            "What happened?" Korra asked again. Bolin kept his face in his hands, but he knew the look she must be giving him, that look of frightened concern that she wore every time he slipped. But her voice and the way she had taken to scratching the back of his head were comforting, and that was nice.

            He didn't say a word.

            "Did you dream again?" Korra persisted. "Is that what happened?"

            Despite himself, Bolin nodded. It was a lie, but it seemed the easiest way to disarm the situation. How could he truly explain what had happened? There was no way. What would he say to her? _I was thinking about the best way to go about killing myself so that I could rescue Mako and then die to save you all the trouble of dealing with me, but I got scared of what comes afterward and couldn't control myself._

            Nailed it.

            "What'd you dream about?" Korra sounded curious. She stopped idly scratching and dropped her hand to his shoulder again for another mildly painful but wholly reassuring squeeze. "Was it the lava?"

            Bolin shook his head. He hadn't dreamed of the lava in a while. He hadn't dreamed of much of anything because he didn't allow himself to sleep, and the only time he'd slept he'd dreamt of the collapse.

            He let his hands drop onto his knees, and he stared at the blanket. A sliver of light had fallen upon it from the window, the tiniest hint of red about it, and Bolin knew that the night was gone. He wondered how long he'd been panicking. Between the attack he'd suffered after his encounter with Opal and what he'd just suffered now, it must have been hours. But it had felt like seconds. Odd how the time passed by so quickly.

            "Will you please talk to me?" Korra asked. Her hand dropped lower, and she squeezed his arm a bit desperately. "Please?"

            Bolin shook his head. "I didn't dream about the lava," he lied.

            "Then what was it?"

            For a few seconds, he thought. Then he said, "The collapse."

            Korra stammered uncertainly for a few seconds, like she hadn't been expecting the answer. "The collapse?" she finally uttered. "Like, _the_ collapse?"

            Dryly, Bolin said, "There was only one."

            "Oh," Korra said. "I guess you're right. Do you want to talk about it?"

            Bolin shook his head. There was nothing to talk about. All he'd remembered was falling, landing hard on his shoulder, then looking up and waiting for the impact. There had been a tiny dot of blue that must have been sky. Outside of that he had no memory and hadn't dreamed of anything either, and Bolin wasn't sure he wanted any more. The fleeting images he already had were plenty enough to scare the daylights out of him.

            "Is there anything I can do?"

            "You can dig inside my head and rip out the part of my brain responsible for making me remember this stuff."

            "I... I don't think I can do that."

            "Then no, there's nothing you can do."

            Korra's hand dropped off his arm. He felt it thump against the mattress behind him, and he felt Korra's posture shift defensively. He hadn't meant to come across so angrily, but he supposed it couldn't be helped. Until he got a decent night's rest, he'd be exhausted, and even before all of this had happened he was a shameless grouch when he was overtired.

            "You didn't actually sleep, did you?"

            Bolin snapped to attention and stared at Korra with a look he knew had given him away. But he didn't say anything. He couldn't think of anything except to ask how she had known. It was like she’d read his mind.

            "You're not the only one who can tell when someone is lying," she said flatly, then she stood up and stretched. "People generally don't look as bad as you do if they've slept, even if they didn't sleep well. You look like you're ready to keel over."

            She would never recognize the irony in that statement.

            "So why don't you lay down and _actually_ go to sleep for a while," Korra continued. "I'll go get your things and find Pabu--I don't think he came in yesterday--and get everything squared away to leave this afternoon."

            "I didn't pack," Bolin said. "I haven't done anything."

            Korra shrugged and made her way toward the door. "Doesn't matter. I can pack for you. Just get some rest, okay? And I mean it."

            She left without allowing him the chance to protest.

            Bolin laid gently back down on Korra's bed and pulled the pillow over his face. It was too bright here, he thought. Her room hadn't been given the proper décor to make daytime napping very effective. It just wasn't as comfortable here as it was in his own room. Her pillow smelled like she did, and that distracted him almost as much as the fire in his chest where Opal had hit him. On top of that, his shoulder had started aching deeply and he wasn’t sure why. Still, he forced himself to lay there and close his eyes, and he began to contemplate whether he should try to sleep. He was out cold before he could truly engage the debate.

            He dreamed again, but not of the ocean and not of the collapse. This time his dreams were speculative. He imagined the way his plan might play out and the things that could go wrong.

            The first thing he imagined was that he wouldn't be weak enough by the time they finished executing the rescue. Certainly, he hadn't fully recovered from this whole thing--he was still pretty weak--but he was nowhere near as bad as he'd been when he'd collapsed the night Su, Lin, and the others had thought him to be dying. He'd been working too hard to have remained that bad off, and Bolin worried that even if he starved himself and even if he didn't sleep, it wouldn't be enough to push him over the edge.

            He dreamed that Korra and Asami figured out what he was up to, and that was more frightening still than the last iteration. Realistically, he knew that if Korra found out, she would scold him and she might yell at him, but in the end she'd offer herself for support and help him pull through, even if he didn't want her to. She would _drag_ him through if she had to. And Asami had been the voice of reason for everything Team Avatar had done since they'd met years ago. She'd seen everyone at their worst, Bolin included, but had always kept a logical mind and maintained objectivity. Bolin wondered if she'd still maintain that clear-headedness if she found out what he'd done to Opal. She had to know. She had to have found out, and she would either help him or hang him out to dry. Either way, he came out alive.

            There was only one situation in which Bolin could be certain he'd be successful, and that was if he took care of things himself. When his mind engaged those thoughts, his dreams shifted to brief, vivid flashes that always ended the same way: In absolute silence and unmitigated darkness. He dreamed that he crushed himself, he dreamed that he threw himself in front of a combustion bender's fire bolt, he dreamed that he buried himself alive and suffocated, and every time it came to the violent end, everything went dark and quiet and the emptiness lingered until the next awful dream began.

            For the first time in as long as he could remember, Bolin woke on his own with a weird, empty feeling in his chest. After all the nightmares he'd just had, he should've been panicking all over again, but there was nothing. The void had opened inside him again. It was odd. Stranger still was that the sliver of light filtering through the window had landed square on his face, but Bolin distinctly remembered falling asleep with the pillow over his head.

            He sat up slowly to take inventory of himself the same as he did most days when he woke, but stopped when he noted Korra watching him curiously from the floor where she sat surrounded by piles of unfolded clothes. She smiled when his eyes fell on her, and then went back to her work without a word.

            Bolin felt thankful that she hadn't spoken to him; his chest had tightened with embarrassment when he'd realized that she was there, and it seared with pain again. He wondered how long she'd been sitting there in silence while he slept and dreamt about not waking up.

            "You've got a little more than half an hour before we're supposed to leave," Korra said quietly as she folded. "Bathroom is down the hall. You should go grab a quick shower so we can feed you before we go."

            There was something in Korra's voice that piqued his curiosity. She didn't sound good. Her voice lacked the confidence it'd had before he'd fallen asleep, but it remained steady. She hadn't been crying, that much was obvious, but there was still something wrong.

            "Are you okay?" he asked.

            Korra looked up at him again and offered a fraudulent smile. "All good."

            Against his will, Bolin felt a skeptical look fall onto his face. "That's a lie."

            Now Korra laughed a little. It was a genuine laugh that made Bolin feel a little bit better about the whole situation. She wouldn't be laughing if something truly awful had happened. But she wasn't forthcoming, either. She just sat there shaking her head and folding laundry, and it struck Bolin suddenly that she was folding _his_ clothes, not her own.

            "What's wrong?"

            "I went out to get Pabu since we left him outside. I didn’t find him, but I ran into Asami," Korra said blandly. She didn't look at him and didn't stop the folding. "She wasn't happy. She was looking for you. I didn't tell her you were in here, so if she finds out she's going to be upset."

            "You lied to her?"

            "I told her that I didn't know where you were."

            "Why would you do that?"

            "Because she knows what you did. If she gets you by yourself, you're going to get an earful, and I didn't figure you needed that right now. Now, seriously, go get a bath. We don't have enough time to mess around."

            Bolin stood. "Why didn't you wake me up earlier?"

Now Korra did look at him, and her expression matched his own: Curious and skeptical and maybe a little bit indignant. "Because you haven't slept in like a week. I wasn't going to wake you up until I absolutely _had_ to. Now go on. Asami's gone getting Oogi ready, so you won't have to worry about running into anyone."

            Bolin went and occupied himself with a short, thoughtless shower that served more to ease the pain in his chest and shoulder than it did to force the stress out of him. When Opal had airbent at him, he knew it was going to be bad, but now that he was looking at the wound it was worse than he ever thought it would be. He thought she'd just knocked the wind out of him, and to be fair she had, but that was nothing when compared to the enormous bruise that had taken up residence all up and down his left side. A bloom of ugly purple and blue extended from breast to hip, and it remained so tender to the touch that even the water hurt.

            He'd have to ask Korra to do something about it. He just wasn't sure when he'd do it. He didn't want to worry her any more than she already seemed to be worried.

            When he returned half-dressed to Korra's room, Korra seemed to have finished packing his clothes and was presently stuffing what looked like random supplies into a bag. She'd left some clothes on her bed for him which, to Bolin's dismay, included the shin-length Zaofu-styled robe Su had given him but he'd never worn, all its metal adornments still attached. He put it on anyway, unwilling to bother her with his stupid, painful bruise.

            Within ten minutes, Korra pronounced herself finished with her business, stood, and tossed Bolin a bag. Then she gestured him from the room and together they walked to the bison stables.

            Bolin wasn't surprised to see Asami there already, up in Oogi's basket tending to something or other that he couldn't see. She didn't look angry, which came as a relief. She looked very focused, and didn't notice that they had arrived.

            "Heads up!" Korra called, and she tossed her bag up into the basket. Then she grabbed Bolin's and threw it up as well. At this point, Asami did notice them.

            The look she gave Korra was perfectly normal, a look of mild irritation that Korra had thrown their bags at her, but then Asami's eyes fell on Bolin, and he felt himself shrink beneath the weight. He'd never seen such a hateful scowl on her face before, and he didn't like it. But at least he knew how this was going to go, and if Asami wasn't going to be supportive of him then at least he still had Korra to fall back on, for whatever she was worth.

            Bolin decided he simply wouldn’t talk, at least not to Asami. He couldn't upset her further if he didn't say or do anything to interact with her. She probably didn't want to talk to him anyway.

            Korra, for her part, seemed to be trying to play things off as regularly as possible. She called, "Do you need any help up there?" and when Asami replied in the negative, she shrugged and turned to Bolin. "I guess we could go grab some food if you want. We could look for Pabu."

            In honesty, Bolin didn't want to see Pabu, because seeing him would mean saying good-bye to him. Bolin wasn't sure he could handle that. He wasn't sure he was ready, and worried that it might make him change his mind.

            Bolin glanced between Asami and Korra, and he shrugged. "You can go ahead," he said flatly. "I'll stay here in case Asami needs help."

            "I'm not going to need your help," Asami snapped from the basket.

            Bolin looked down, ashamed. "I guess I'll just sit here, then," he said, quiet and defeated. "Seems to be about all I'm good for anyway."

            He sat heavily on the ground and leaned against Oogi's hind leg, then started picking at his knuckles. He didn't remember ever fidgeting so much in his life, but it felt weird to keep his hands still. Even as he sat there, he could feel Korra watching him. Her gaze made him feel even more self-conscious than Asami's had. At least Asami’s face made her feelings clear. Korra’s feelings were a total mystery, and no matter what Bolin did he couldn’t get a read on her.

            Still, Korra left eventually, and Bolin spent the time she was gone staring at the ground and continuing to roll his plans over and over in his head. Every time he thought about it, he felt a little bit hopeful. Then he felt overwhelming dread.

            "You, up here, now."

            Bolin jolted out of his daydreaming and looked up. Asami was leaning over the side of the basket, glaring. It took a second for him to realize that she’d been speaking to him. "Yes, ma'am," he said dryly, and he got slowly to his feet. He raised a pillar of earth beneath his feet and hopped into the basket.

            "Tighten that." Asami pointed at one of the ropes that was presently securing their bags.

            "You know, a please wouldn't hurt. Besides, you just said you wouldn't need my help like five minutes ago," Bolin said. Still, he made his way over and did as she asked. With one foot propped on the baggage, he heaved against the rope twice, tied it in place, and then rubbed at his hands. "Is that okay?"

            Asami didn't answer him. He turned around to find her staring hard, her brows low and her arms crossed. She looked ready to murder him.

            "Let's get one thing straight, Bolin," she said, "I didn't want you to be here. I _still_ don't want you to be here, because not only are you going to be a liability, you're also going to be a threat, and we don’t need to deal with your drama while we're trying to save Mako."

            She may as well have slapped him. He didn't know what to say, and even if he could figure it out he was too flabbergasted to speak at all. He just stood there, mouth agape, while Asami went on.

            "I told Korra that we should leave you here, because if you have one of your stupid fits while we're trying to do something important you could get us all killed. She insisted you come, though. She said it would be _cruel_ to make you stay." She laughed derisively. "The only cruel thing is making Opal and me be anywhere near you. Which brings me to the point: Opal will be here soon. She's coming on this trip whether you want her to or not, and if you so much as _look_ at her the wrong way, I'll make sure you regret it for the rest of your very short, very sad life."

            For a few seconds, Bolin blinked in astonishment at the mere fact that Asami was talking to him in such a horrible way. But then he registered that she'd said Opal was coming, too. How could she after what he'd done to her? Hadn't he scared her into staying home?

            At once, Bolin felt stupid and ashamed. He should've known better than to think that Opal would be swayed by something like a threat. He'd hurt her, and he never imagined that she'd stand up to that.  He’d threatened the unthinkable, but it had all been for nothing. He’d ruined everything, and in the end it didn't matter at all.

            The weight of what Asami said hit him, and his face settled into a look somewhere between angry and offended. "What do you want me to do here?"

            "I want you to sit in a corner and keep your mouth shut and your eyes down."

            Bolin crossed his arms defensively and maintained eye contact as best he was able. But then he realized how futile it was. He recognized exactly what Asami was going for: distance. She wanted him to steer clear of all of them as best as he was able, and wasn't that what he'd decided he was going to do anyway?

            Maybe it would make things easier. If nothing else, it crystallized the idea that dying was the right decision.

            At last, Bolin's face relaxed and his eyes dropped, and all the indignation went out of him. He thought for a moment. "Now that you've made yourself clear to me, I need to make something clear to you," he said quietly but evenly, and when Asami opened her mouth to protest, he held up his hand to stop her. "It's only fair that you hear me out." He paused, and when he took a deep preparatory breath it hurt so badly that he grabbed instinctively at his side. He tried to pass it off as crossing his arm over his chest. "You need to know right here and right now that I'm _not_ going to apologize to you."

            It was Asami's turn to look indignant.

            "I'm not apologizing to Opal, either."

            Now she looked angry again.

            "You want to know why I'm not going to, Asami? Because saying I'm sorry means that I expect you to forgive me, and I don't. I don't expect any of you to forgive me in a million years! I can't even forgive myself, so how can I expect you to forgive me?" He paused and looked down, shook his head. "Whatever. Let's not get into the touchy-feely business, right?" He looked back up, his face hardened. "The good news for you is this is the last you're ever going to have to deal with me. After this is over, I don't care if I never see any of you or speak to any of you for the rest of my life, Mako included. You want me to sit down and shut up? You got it. But if you're going to make me sit in the corner like a naughty little boy then you're going to leave me alone, too. You don't want me to talk to you? Fine, as long as you don't talk to me, either."

            At some point during his rant, the anger had left Asami's face, and by the time he'd finished his last sentence, she looked regretful, as if she hadn’t been expecting the reaction she’d gotten. Bolin didn't really care, though. She'd made herself extremely clear: stay away. And he meant to stay away. It would make things easier in the end.

            Bolin sat with a quiet, pained grunt in the rear corner of Oogi's basket, the corner nearest the luggage he'd just tied down, and then crossed his arms and stared at his knees. He'd just have to endure, he thought. He'd just have to keep breathing and put one foot in front of the other, because if he did that he could make progress toward the end.

            Bolin only knew that Korra had returned because Pabu jumped into the basket and perched on his knees. Automatically, Bolin patted him on the head, and Pabu jumped into his lap and cuddled there.

            He'd been right. Seeing Pabu all happy and comfortable was probably the most painful part of the whole issue so far, aside from Pabu's rolling around on his ribs. This would be the last time Bolin would see him, if everything went according to plan. And even if things didn't go according to plan, their time together would be limited. He wouldn't take Pabu along if he walked out. He wouldn't be able to take care of him. He could barely take care of himself.

            Then Asami hopped out of the basket, and Bolin could hear the girls talking. He couldn't tell what they were saying, but he heard Su and he heard Opal, and both of their voices made his stomach turn in knots. The knots became painful when he heard Su calling for him.

            "Come down here!" Su cried.

            With an enormous sigh, Bolin stood and made his way to the edge of the basket, where he could see everyone gathered in a half-circle down below. Opal didn’t turn to look, and Bolin was fine with that. He couldn't bear to look at Opal in any capacity, even if he wouldn’t see her face.

            Su looked up at him with a stern but motherly expression. "Come on," she said, and she gestured him down. "I need to talk to you."

            Bolin coaxed Pabu onto his shoulder and then jumped from the basket. He landed gently and stifled a grunt at the pain in his side, and again crossed his arm over his chest. He didn't approach them. He didn't even look up. If someone wanted to talk to him, they could talk. It didn't mean he was going to say anything back. He wasn't going to join the group, either. He'd stand in the back nice and quiet, just the way Asami wanted. He'd be a shadow.

            "You're wearing your robe!" Su cried delightedly. "It does fit you well, doesn't it? I was worried you didn't like it."

            He didn't say anything. Considering what he’d done to her, he couldn't understand why she would've sounded so happy, unless she was going to be passive-aggressive. Bolin wondered for a second if maybe she'd forgiven him, but he shook his head. There was no way. She'd never forgive him. When he shot a glance toward her, Su looked a little downcast at his lack of reaction.

            "I've made arrangements for all of you at a hotel in Omashu's business district. It's not a suite by any means, but it'll be enough to get you by for the night. Dinners and beds are already paid for. I gave Opal money for you to buy any other supplies or food you think you'll need. There should be plenty." Su paused, and when Bolin glanced at her again she'd started looking between everyone. Her voice went soft. "Now I know there's been a lot of drama around here, but I want you kids to look out for each other. What you're doing is dangerous, and I don’t know what I’d do if any of you were hurt. Please promise you'll take care."

            The girls nodded. Bolin could see the motion in his periphery. But he didn't move. He kept his eyes locked on the ground, even when Pabu nibbled at him and chattered. Then Su started making the rounds, hugging each of them in turn and lingering for a long time. And after she let each of the girls out of her arms, they hopped into Oogi's basket in turn.

            She saved Bolin for last, and she didn't hug him. Instead, once they were alone, she gently adjusted the metal collar of his robe and patted him on the chest. It hurt terribly, but he managed to keep a straight face. It wasn't hard to keep a straight face with his eyes on the ground.

            "I said some nasty things to you yesterday," Su said quietly, "and I wanted to apologize. I kicked you when you were down and insulted your manhood. That was wrong. I'm sorry."

            Confused, Bolin looked at her. How could she be treating him so kindly? He'd melted her courtyard because he couldn't restrain his anger and he'd hit her, and beyond that he'd assaulted her daughter. Surely, she must have known about that. Opal must have told her. Opal told Su _everything_ , didn't she?

            Su must've recognized the look on his face, because she smiled and nodded. "That's right," she continued, "I'm apologizing. And I want you to know that I forgive you, too, even if you don't think you deserve it and even if you won’t ask me to. I didn't tell the girls what happened between us, and I don't ever plan to. You've had a bad couple of days, and I understand that. I lost my temper." Again, she fiddled with the collar, shined it with her sleeve, and sighed. He couldn't tell if she was sad or nervous. "Promise me that you'll take care of them. The girls, I mean. They're a strong bunch, but sometimes they can get in over their heads, especially Korra. I know it's a lot to ask of you, but make sure they stay safe, okay?"

            He nodded. What else was he supposed to do? Tell her he wasn't going to watch out for them? Sure, he might be angry at them, but that didn't mean he wanted them to be hurt. He would've watched out for them regardless of whether Su asked.

            "Will you look at me?"

            He glanced up, but when his eyes met hers, he lowered them again. He couldn't hold eye contact like that. He felt too horrible to even consider it.

            "Come on," she tucked her finger under his chin and raised his eyes to hers. "Now listen to me, okay? Will you listen?"

            Bolin nodded despite her hold.

            "You are loved. Do you understand? All of us love you dearly, and if anything was to happen to you we'd all be devastated. I include myself in that. You promised you'd make sure the girls will be safe, but you need to promise me that you'll keep yourself safe, too."

            He dropped his gaze to the ground again. He didn't want to lie to her, but he didn't want her to know what he was thinking, either. It was an impossible situation, and Bolin didn't know what to do. He was tired of promising people things. He was tired of breaking his word.

            "I thought that might be your answer, and I can't force you to say otherwise. If you won't promise to keep yourself safe, then at least promise me you'll keep an open mind. Things won't get better unless you think they'll get better. You go into this all doom and gloom like you are, it's going to be awful, but if you open up a little bit and actually talk to people, things might not be as bad as you think."

            He nodded.

            "Good boy."

            He'd known the whole time that she would eventually hug him, but when it finally happened he still tensed up. It hurt. It hurt a lot. His shoulder ached and his chest was on fire and Su was squeezing both like it was the last time she'd see him for the rest of eternity. She stayed there for a long time, longer than she'd stayed there with the girls, even though Bolin never hugged her back. He only felt bad about it when she finally pulled away and rubbed at her eyes with the backs of her hands. She'd maintained her composure remarkably well. Bolin hadn't realized she'd been upset.

            Su drew a deep, calming breath and patted Bolin on the shoulders, rubbed his arms, and smiled. It was a bittersweet smile, and she didn't look up at him when she did it. "You take care," she said. "Be safe."

            Bolin plucked Pabu from his shoulder and dropped him absently on Su's, knowing that she would take care of Pabu easily enough if he didn't come home. She looked up when Pabu's feet touched her neck, but by that time Bolin was already making his way into Oogi's basket to set off for Omashu.

            He didn't look at Opal. He didn't want to look at her. His stomach lurched sickly when he thought about looking at her. It took surprisingly little effort to keep his eyes down, and he seated himself again in the rear corner of the basket, pulled his knees to his chest, and stared out the back. No one said anything to him as they went about their final checks, and after a time he felt them all settle in, take their seats, and with a gentle swaying, Oogi took flight.

            It wasn't until they were high in the air and he could see the whole of Zaofu that Bolin realized the truth: If his plans worked out, he'd never see this place again. He stared down at it, a little sad for the lack of domes, and silently said good-bye. Then he folded his arms atop his knees, dropped his forehead down, and closed his eyes. He didn’t cry. He couldn’t have cried even if he’d wanted to. The void had opened in full, and this time he didn’t try to stop himself falling back in again. This time he let the void swallow him up knowing he wouldn’t crawl back out, and he simply didn’t care.


	32. Yaozhu

            Mako was dead.

            There was no consciousness, no sense, no thought, no darkness. There was _nothing_ , and it existed--or didn't exist--for eternity.

            Then, the nothing stopped. It was strange, how nothing could turn into something so suddenly, and how that something could become terrifying self-awareness.

            A figure appeared to him as a vague blob of darkness in the darkness, an apparition that could have been or could not. It felt familiar, somehow, but he couldn't have identified it in a million years. It felt like so many people dead and gone. It felt like himself. Weird. How could he feel himself if he didn't exist?

            He understood very little as he stared at the darkness in the darkness, except that this sort of thing couldn't really exist. It must be a dream. But dreaming meant that his imagination was working, and that his imagination worked meant that his brain worked, and if his brain worked, the rest of his body must be working, too.

            It was the metacognition that drew him to consciousness, and the first and only thing he felt was pain so intense he wished he'd not awakened at all. It was a strange pain, a pain in his limbs but he couldn't feel his limbs, and a pain in his chest but he couldn't feel his chest. There was pain everywhere but he couldn't identify the wound. He couldn't tell if it was a stabbing or an aching or a throbbing. There was just pain without thought or memory or cognizance.

            Then nothing again.

            The black blob appeared again, except this time it looked like someone. It looked like someone he'd known once, but it didn't move and it didn't speak, and its features were obscured by the dark.

            He shouldn't be dreaming. He was dead. But he was dreaming. How could he dream if he was dead?

            The metacognition brought him back again, and this time he recognized his body. He was a person with thoughts that were blurry and limbs that were on fire. His whole body felt on fire. He identified the pain as _burning_ , and then gave back in to the nothing.

            The black blob wasn't black this time, yet it wasn't a person either. Was it even human? Of course it was. It had to be. But was it a male or a female? Was it a friend or a stranger? Would he have known who it was even if he was supposed to?

            For the first time, he stepped toward the figure, and this struck him as odd because he'd had no limbs. He'd had no body at all. He'd been dead.

            There was hearing, now: a deep rumbling in what he recognized as ears. He hadn't known he'd had ears. He wondered if he had eyes, too, but he didn't know how to find out.

            There was still pain, and had he been able to recall the last time he'd waked, he might have realized that the pain burned just a little less this time. There was a strange coldness that touched him here, then there, on what might've been his chest and what might've been his arm and what might've been his face, but he didn't know. He only knew that the cold felt good.

            The blob took on features. It had eyes and ears and a mouth and a body that were indistinguishable from anything else. He didn't know how he knew they were there. Some strange instinct told him that those parts existed, and that the parts were in the places they were supposed to be. He couldn't see the colors or the shapes. He just knew they were there.

            The hearing came stronger. There were sounds he recognized as voices that made noises that must have been words. But what were the words? What was their tone? What emotion did they convey? Did he know the language? What language was it? If he could tell that, he could tell where he was...

            The blob wasn't a blob at all. It was a human being with two arms and two legs and a face and a body. Genderless and featureless, it came toward him like a shadow, and he drew away from it. He'd not expected it to approach. He'd not expected it to move at all: It hadn't moved before.

            He recognized that there had been a _before_ , and so returned the perception of time. He didn't understand it, but he knew that it was there.

            Sight came next, though not in a meaningful way. He'd opened his eyes without remembering how or why, but what he knew should have been shapes and lights and colors were naught but an indistinct dot in the middle of blurry black boundaries. His eyes moved, but the dot didn't change.

            The nothing came again, but it wasn't _nothing_ anymore. The blob looked like he looked, but he didn't know what he looked like. And the hearing persisted, louder this time.

            He listened.

            "You didn't think it was going to be so easy, did you? Did you think I'd let you die? Silly, foolish boy."

            He was a male.

            "Do you feel sorry for yourself? You should. You had a lot of potential, but you spoiled it when you betrayed me. You betrayed all of us: your quad, your brothers and sisters in fire. Because of you, every man and woman on this island is in jeopardy."

            He wasn't a good male. He was a bad person. He'd put people in danger.

            "You informed Republic City's chief of police that we were going to attack, and she prepared for it. You directly denied us new members. You contributed to the oppression of our race. You told her that we were stationed here and you told her that the Boiling Rock was our quarantine. Our primary sorting facility is ruined because of you and your big mouth, four zero five, and now we've got to prepare our primary housing unit for attack."

            He had a name: Four zero five. It seemed a weird name, though he didn't know why. He'd been to a place called _Republic City_ , though he didn't know where it was.

            "We ran from the Boiling Rock because there was too much chance for rebellion. The people housed there weren't fully committed to our cause, you see, so they were relocated. Our secondary quarantine is now the primary. Our tertiary is now the secondary. We're a much larger assembly than you gave us credit for, I think. This island is just one of many independent communes for our people. But I suppose that doesn't matter now, does it? We can't change the past. Let's discuss your future.

            "It would be foolish to assume our island is immune from attack. In fact, I imagine we'll be put under siege very soon. The difference is that this time, we won't run. We won't abandon this place the same way we abandoned the Boiling Rock. We have strength in numbers, and our numbers are unconditionally loyal. We're going to stand our ground and drive out whoever it is that comes to call, and we're going to obliterate them. We've got supplies to last months without outside contact. You've seen the storerooms. And after it's all said and done, we'll move ourselves to another commune to rebuild if we have to. I suppose it'll depend on how much damage is done. Combustion benders can be so inaccurate."

            Bending. He was a firebender. Was he a combustion bender? No. They were rare.

            "And when your precious friends in arms show up at our door, we'll be certain they know that you caused their defeat. Before we kill each of them, we'll let them know that _Mako_ did this to them, because he couldn't keep his nose out of business that wasn't his own. Shame. You had so much potential."

            The nothing set in again, and as it did, he recognized the name. His name wasn't four zero five. It was Mako. And he was a firebender. And he'd betrayed someone. And he'd been in _Republic City_. And he'd been injured.

            The blob-person was a male. It was him. He recognized the face and he recognized the body. He took initiative. He approached. Hand outstretched, he touched it.

 

            Mako woke with sudden knowledge. He woke with understanding he'd not had before, with sense and self-awareness and memory. He remembered the fight that had incapacitated him. He'd fought and he'd lost, and he remembered the strange calmness that fell over him in the fraction of a second before the half-dozen combustion bolts blew up in his face.

            He should've been dead.

            He didn't remember dreaming. He didn't remember the blob. He didn't remember waking and wondering and listening to that strange voice say words that must have had meaning. Everything else was clear as crystal, including the pain.

            The pain felt unlike any he'd experienced before in its depth and intensity. It radiated out from the pit of his stomach, a dull ache that pulsed through his core. And there was the burning, of course. His arms felt cold yet hot. A stinging, biting feeling crept over his skin. Mako knew it was a burn. He'd burned himself before.

            He listened but couldn't hear much of anything over the persistent, low rumble in his ears. He opened his eyes but the world was a blur of shape and color. He dared not try to speak; he didn't want to draw attention to himself. If he'd been captured, he'd lose his chance to analyze the situation. If he'd been left for dead, he'd draw attention to himself.

            Mako knew that he was alone. There wasn't a human-shaped blur anywhere that he could see. It made sense: The cold told him that he was certainly somewhere in the complex of tunnels running beneath the city, and if things had panned out the way he imagined, he was certainly captive in a cell somewhere.

            He felt around with the backs of his hands--his palms were all but useless--and recognized damp stone beneath his back. He reached all around: His right hand connected with a wall, his left hit open air. He must've been laying in a corner.

            With great effort, Mako pushed himself up and sat heavily against the support. He squinted his eyes as hard as he could, straining to see, but the only thing he could identify through the blur was a flickering red light somewhere across the way.

            Mako strained to think through the pain. He was in a rock room beneath Fire Fountain City. The rock room was in a firelit hallway. When he breathed, the air felt heavy and humid so the room must've been deep underground--or relatively deep, anyway. This wasn't a first or second basement room. He wondered exactly how deep the tunnels ran, and why they ran that way.

            It was odd, Mako recognized, how self-aware he was and yet how he remained otherwise utterly unaware. For now, it seemed like his mind was capable of registering only one input at a time: When he was busy thinking and analyzing, he didn't see and he didn't hear; when he focused on looking or hearing, he didn't think. In most cases, he was incapable of feeling anything--not emotionally, but physically--and with understanding of his potential injury, Mako was glad for that.

            In the midst of thinking about all of this, Mako realized that someone was there. Several someones were there. He could hear them talking, but he couldn't tell what they were saying. There came the sound of metal scraping against stone. The door had opened.

            Mako wondered how long he'd been awake and how long they'd been standing there. Without a way to mark the time, he couldn't know. Certainly they knew he was awake.

            One of the figures approached, and Mako didn't move. He sat resolutely, unwilling to flinch and unwilling to pull away as they set to work.

            The figure was a waterbender. The figure was a healer. Mako could feel the water touching his arms and his chest solely by virtue of its coldness. It wasn't Toru. It wasn't anyone he knew. The touch was unfamiliar, cold, and impersonal. Mako imagined that this was the touch of someone who didn't care what they were doing and were operating under orders only. Perhaps they were operating under threat. He imagined that he was being healed by someone who was just as much a captive as he was now.

            He didn't pay a lot of attention to what was happening to him: It would make no real difference anyway. If someone wanted him healed, he was going to be healed. If someone wanted him dead, he would be dead. So, Mako thought, and Mako worried.

            Toru had healed him every time he'd needed it before. She'd been the first to work with him after Ba Sing Se. He worried because she wasn't there now, that perhaps she'd been hurt or punished for her affiliation with him. But that didn't make sense, either. She'd been close to him for weeks and had suffered no ill effects because of it. Why would that change now? It wasn't her fault what he did. Why would she be punished?

            For the first time, the thought came into Mako's mind that perhaps she hadn't been as loyal to him as he thought. Everything to this crazy society was a test of some kind, of strength or of will or body, of resolve and commitment, so why wouldn't her presence have been some kind of test for him? Why couldn't it have been a test for her?

            Either way, they'd both probably failed.

            Mako considered that maybe she was a plant. Maybe she was a way for Guan to spy on him. Maybe Guan had sent her to get information. If that was the case, Mako had played right into their hand. It made sense, too, because whenever Mako thought about it he remembered being told that there had been _four_ informants who'd ratted him out, not just three, and that allowed for Jing, Fa, Yaozhu, _and_ Toru. He didn't know who else it could be.

            Again, things didn't add up. Even if he accepted that Toru was some kind of weird double agent and had turned belly up on him, Yaozhu wouldn't have. No one could fake such genuine enthusiasm and respect. Yaozhu wouldn't have squealed on him, at least not with the intent to harm.

            It must have been an accident, Mako reasoned. He must have been excited, or he must have been tired, or someone must have asked him the wrong question, and Yaozhu spilled. It didn't seem out of the realm of possibility that he, Jing, and Fa might've discussed what had happened in Republic City, and if Yaozhu believed that the rest of his quad was just as loyal as he was, he would've told them without hesitation.

            It hit Mako suddenly that he'd struck Jing and Fa with lightning, and he hadn't remembered them getting back up.

            By the time the healer had finished with him, Mako's thoughts had exhausted him. He hadn't done anything but sit there with his eyes closed, thinking, but his body felt sluggish and heavy. He peeked up when the water pulled away from his skin, and watched the blurry figures. He found it odd that they were a little less blurry now than they had been before. They said nothing to each other, and they said nothing to him as they left.

            Mako went to sleep, and he didn't dream.

            He couldn't have said how long it was before he woke again, but when he did he was stricken by the degree of improvement in his senses. Neither his eyesight nor his hearing were perfect--they weren't even _good_ if he was honest--but the blurred shapes had taken on a certain amount of detail and he could just barely make out the sound of crackling fire that lit the hallway outside.

            For a long time he sat there, watching the fire and listening to it burn, until he thought for a time that he'd heard footsteps. It wasn't until the firelight blotted out that he knew for certain. A person stood silhouetted against the red.

            "I see you're making progress."

            It was Guan. Mako wasn't surprised.

            "It wouldn't do to have my plaything out of order for too long." Guan paused and Mako could see his posture change, like he'd leaned against the wall, the firelight above his head such that Mako could see more detail. He could see the bars that comprised his cell door. He could see the red uniform. He couldn't see the malevolent smirk that Guan wore, but he could hear it in the tone of his voice.

            "I'm sure you have questions," Guan said. "I'll answer them."

            The only word Mako could force through his tightened throat was, "Why?" He sounded gross, his voice all raspy and dry. And the talking had hurt. He wondered if he'd burned inside, too.

            "Why?" Guan laughed. "That's a vague question, don't you think? I had you revived so that you'd know suffering. I'm having you healed so that I can break you down again. It's as simple as that. Call it sadism if you must, but I see it as revenge. You tried to steal Toru from me, and you were genuine about it. Too bad she was never interested in you."

            Mako gaped in disbelief. She wasn't interested? Impossible! They had spent nights together. They'd kissed and touched and kindled a far more intimate relationship than anything Mako had nurtured at home. She'd certainly seemed interested when she'd stayed overnight in his bed.

            "She was there on my order," Guan continued with the slightest chuckle. "She was there because I wanted her to be there. I told you already that I always thought you had potential. I don't know if you remember me telling you that--you were barely alive. You weren't yet conscious enough to even open your eyes, but she assured me you could hear. That's right, four zero five, she was the one who brought you back. That alone should tell you the truth of the matter, that she never loved you the way you thought she did. No, anyone who loved another would have let them go. You were wounded gravely. You were dead. You were _actually_ gone!" He laughed again, and this time it was no gentle chuckle. It was an evil, frigid laugh that set Mako's hair on edge. Then Guan went eerily calm again, his voice even and low. "No. Had she loved you, she would've let you go. But she brought you back so that I could take my pleasure in your suffering. And here we are."

            Mako didn't say anything. Even if he'd felt ready to speak, he didn't know what he would say. He didn't know how he would respond to what Guan had said because he didn't even know how he felt about it. He'd worried about this possibility yesterday--was it yesterday?--and now it had been confirmed.

            "It surprised me how foolish you were," Guan said. He pushed himself away from the firelight and began to pace. Mako could see his figure moving back and forth beyond the barred door. "See, when you first arrived among us I recognized you. I heard the reports of your strength in firebending and hoped that you would elevate yourself among the ranks. I'd hoped in time that you might serve on my personal guard. But I had to vet you, and I knew from the moment you first saw Toru that she would be the way to go.

            "It's funny how gullible you were. Funny how fast you fell and how quickly you gave up your secrets to a complete stranger. Well, I can't be too surprised. Put a pretty girl in any man's bed and he's liable to lose his mind. I made the arrangements to send you to Republic City as a result of the things she told me. She recounted to me every conversation the two of you ever had. She told me about your wavering loyalty, how you walked the line between us and them, and I knew that sending you on a diplomatic mission to the city would push you one way or the other. I wanted to give you the chance to choose wisely. You tried to walk the line till the very end. It was a commendable effort."

            So he knew. He'd known the whole time. Mako remembered the conversation he'd had with Toru the night before he'd left, when he'd explained to her in full detail his plans for the trip. He regretted it now. He should've kept his guard up. He should've kept to himself.

            "I suppose I'll let you sleep on it," Guan said. "You should be well enough to entertain a visitor tomorrow."

            Guan left, and Mako was alone again.

            He thought for a while about the potential for visitors. Guan would almost certainly bring Toru. Why else would he have given such a lengthy speech about her if he wasn't going to rub the failure in his face?

            Mako sighed, defeated, and leaned back against the wall again. He looked up to the gray stone ceiling and watched the firelight dance upon the rock. It made him think of Bolin, and that thought caused a wave of regret to wash over him. If only Mako had fought harder to escape when he'd been captured, Bolin might still be alive. If he'd worked harder to get his warning out, Bolin might still be alive. If he'd just tried, Mako knew that he wouldn't be in this predicament and the two of them would be together the same as they had always been together.

            But Mako hadn't tried. He'd allowed himself to get swept up in the society, and he knew now he'd done wrong. He recalled a time when he'd been certain of his actions, a time when he'd known that everything he did and everything he would do was motivated by the desire to bring them down. There was a time when he played along with their little war game, having every intention of _infiltrating_ the society rather than _participating_ in it.

            Mako didn't know when the line had blurred. He thought on it for a long time and couldn't recall when the distinction between _Mako the Detective_ and _Mako the Captain_ had been lost, but he knew that it had been gone for a long time.

            It must have been when he was inducted, Mako reasoned. That must have been the end of the line. Of course, he knew that he'd been playing into their hands every day before that, when he worked so hard at training and proved himself the most capable among his quad. Even if it hadn't been his intention, Mako had made himself worthy of promotion, and that promotion had provided such luxury to him that he'd gotten comfortable. He'd gotten a bed and a room where he could rest in private, where he could laze about without being bothered by five or six other people. He'd been allowed showers whenever he wanted them, and that was a privilege he'd dearly missed. He was allowed as much food as he wanted whenever he wanted it, and he had choice in what he ate.

            The luxury had been the best and worst thing for him. Full nights of sleep, intermittent periods of leisure, and full meals tailored to his tastes had allowed him to build strength in a way he'd not been able to do before he’d come here. Yes, he'd done the grocery shopping at home, but Bolin had always eaten most of the food as a matter of course. More, the comfort of his bed afforded him more productive rest than he'd ever had before. When he slept, he _slept_ , and when he woke he felt refreshed and strong.

            But it was bad, too. The whole situation was bad. At least when he'd been miserable he'd kept his mind about him. Comfort had bred complacency, and that had led to catastrophe. Mako couldn't help but wonder if things would've panned out differently had he remained in the low ranks.

            He laid down to sleep, and he did not dream.

            When next he woke, Mako was hungry. In fact, the feeling had gone well beyond hunger: He was starving. He couldn't remember the last time he'd eaten, and he assumed that he wouldn't be given much in the way of rations any time soon. Then again, he'd not been in much of a position to eat anything, either.

            Mako opened his eyes to look once more at the ceiling, and he was surprised by its clarity. It seemed that every day he grew a little stronger. Every day he could see a bit more detail. He could make out the individual cracks and divots in the stone, and he could see the highlights and lowlights of the flickering fire.

            And when Guan finally showed up, Mako could see his face. He wore a self-satisfied smirk as he peered into the cell.

            "Good afternoon," Guan said. "I told you that you'd have a visitor today. Are you ready?"

            Mako didn't acknowledge that Guan had said anything at all. He simply watched.

            Guan's smile widened. Then he turned down the hall and nodded toward a person that Mako couldn't see, and in the time between the gesture and the revelation, Mako's stomach swelled with anxiety. The nervous bubble popped when Yaozhu came into view.

            He looked in no better shape than Mako was. In fact, he might've looked worse. Someone had clapped a wide metal plate over his forehead, bound it with thick chains, which wrapped around the back of his neck to his hands and his ankles. He shuffled forward weakly, an attendant on either arm to drag him along.

            "I trust you remember your subordinate," Guan said by way of introduction, and he motioned toward Yaozhu. "I figured you two might like to see each other."

            Yaozhu looked up, and when his eyes fell upon Mako they grew wide and afraid. His face twisted in a look of mixed horror and regret, and it seemed to Mako that Yaozhu might start crying at any minute. But neither of them said anything to the other. Mako didn't know what to say. He imagined Yaozhu felt the same.

            "I should let you know the score," Guan said to Mako. "Both of you are traitors. You understand that, don't you? It's a shame. This child had a lot of promise, too. His brother served us well, before he was captured, and I had hoped to see the same degree of usefulness again. It looks like you beat me to him."

            Yaozhu's eyes dropped back to the ground.

            "This young man was an accomplice to your treason. He admitted to it. He told the other two in your quad what you had done, and those two came to me with the information." Guan looked to the two guards and nodded at them curtly. "Leave us. We need a private word."

            The guards did as they were told, and as soon as they let go Yaozhu's arms, he slumped to the ground. His arms and legs twisted against the tension in the chains.

            "I broke him," Guan said smugly. "I was upset, you see, so I broke him. I love breaking them when they're young like this. It makes them more loyal. It makes them afraid of retribution. Isn't that right?"

            Yaozhu yelped when Guan's foot connected with his side. Mako could see the tears collecting on his face.

            "Have you anything to say to your captain?"

            Frantically, Yaozhu shook his head, and then he looked at Mako with wide, red, tearful eyes that conveyed his horror perfectly. "I'm sorry!" he cried. "I didn't know! I didn't mean to!"

            Guan laughed. He kicked Yaozhu again. "See what I mean? He's loyal to a fault. He's useless now, like a dog gone wild. What am I supposed to do with this mess?"

            Mako watched disgusted while Yaozhu pushed himself back to his knees.

            "I'm sorry!" Yaozhu cried. "I didn't know what we did was wrong! They asked me what we did and I told them. I told them because I thought they were our friends! They were our quadmates, Mako! I didn't know that they would turn on us!"

            He wasn't just loyal to a fault, Mako thought. He was naive to a fault, too. But that was the one thing Mako had liked about the kid: He stayed innocent even when surrounded by people who weren't. Yaozhu had trusted him, had put all his faith in Mako's ability to keep him safe, and Mako had let him down. The fact that he was shackled on his hands and knees said that clearly enough.

            "Do you know what happened to your quadmates?" Guan asked. Mako couldn't tell to whom the question was directed. "Do you know what happened to the others?"

            Mako remembered again how he'd struck them with lightning in the fight.

            "They're dead," Guan said flatly. Then he looked at Yaozhu with a sadistic smile. "Your captain killed them. It was cold-blooded."

            Yaozhu shook his head and looked wide-eyed between Mako and Guan. It was as though he didn't know who to believe. Mako could see what little confidence the boy had left dissolving before his eyes.

            "I'm so sorry," Yaozhu repeated. "This is my fault. I shouldn't have said anything! I should never have said anything!"

            Mako didn't have the heart to agree with him. He didn't have the heart to kick him when he was down. Besides, Guan seemed to be doing plenty enough of that for the both of them. Instead, Mako nodded and said quietly, "It's okay, kid. It's not your fault."

            By now Yaozhu had started to cry in full, and Mako watched while he bent double and sobbed. Guan watched him, too, but he seemed to be finding some kind of sick enjoyment in the matter.

            "Well, what's a quad with two members?" Guan mused. "I certainly can't reassign either of you: You've proven yourselves unworthy of reassignment. What do you suggest I do, Captain?"

            Mako didn't say anything. Speaking now could only worsen the matter.

            "I figured you'd stay quiet. No matter. I know what's to be done."

            A horrible pit opened in Mako's stomach, and he didn't know why. Something in the way Guan had spoken was off. Something in his tone threatened evil intent the likes of which Mako couldn't imagine, but Mako understood at once that Guan wasn't going to play nicely. The chance at mercy had been spoiled.

            The pit had barely opened when Guan set to action, and he moved with a speed that Mako never expected. Mako couldn't move and couldn't speak. He couldn't follow the motion, either. His eyes weren't ready for it. His mind wasn't ready for it. With a grab of his hand and a flick of his wrist, Guan wrapped Yaozhu's neck in the chains, which connected the plate on his forehead to the shackles on his wrists, and he wrenched Yaozhu to his feet.

            Yaozhu struggled. He had to struggle. He grasped at the chains as he could, but the bonds held him tight. He couldn't reach to pull them away, and he gasped and spluttered as Guan tightened his hold.

            "This is what happens when you defy me," Guan said coldly, without a hint of the sadistic joy he'd had before. He slammed Yaozhu hard against the bars of Mako's cell one-handed, then and yanked the chain-holding hand back, drawing the restraint even tighter. "This is the reward for your treachery."

            Mako's blood had gone cold, freezing his body in place on the ground while he stared at Yaozhu squirming. He didn't want to watch, but he couldn't look away. Yaozhu was staring at him, holding full eye contact as his face reddened and the muscles in his throat began to give way. He clawed clumsily at the bars, his hands flailing uselessly against and between the metal. He kicked as wildly as he could in his bondage, but his feet didn't get very far either. The bonds were too tight. The strength was going out of him. Mako could see it leaving. He could hear it leaving in the sick gurgling noises Yaozhu made as he flailed.

            "Isn't it funny?" Guan growled. "Isn't it funny how such powerful benders as these can be rendered utterly helpless with a simple scrap of metal?"

            Mako wanted to cry out against it, but his breath had caught in his throat. His mind screamed, _No, no, no!_ but his voice wouldn't follow. He wanted to stand up and fight, but his body wouldn't react. He couldn't have willed himself to his feet even if he tried, not with the disgusting spectacle of Yaozhu's strangulation less than five feet in front of him. He wanted to tell Yaozhu to close his eyes. He wanted to tell Yaozhu to stop staring at him as much as he wanted to stop staring at Yaozhu, but he couldn't.

            Guan didn't say anything else. He pressed Yaozhu hard against the bars and pulled mightily against the chains, his face a mask of heartless concentration. The harder Guan pulled, the harder Yaozhu fought, and Mako could see him mouthing, _I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry_ over and over and over while his shackles clanged noisily against the bars.

            It felt to Mako as though the surreal scene would never end, like he'd been caught in a perpetual nightmare from which he couldn't hope to escape. But then it ended. It ended suddenly and grotesquely when the flesh of Yaozhu's very purple neck gave way to the unyielding metal with a sickening _squish,_ and his desperate flailing stopped.

            For a long time, Guan kept Yaozhu's body pressed against the bars, and Mako watched Yaozhu's fingers twitching involuntary spasms of death. He wanted to vomit. He wanted to faint. But Mako kept staring until long after Guan dropped Yaozhu's lifeless body to the ground, where he lay open-eyed and strangely rigid, his arms extended as though he was still fighting.

            "It's a shame," Guan said a bit breathlessly, "he could've done so much more."

            Mako didn't know when he'd backed himself against the wall, but now he recognized how hard he'd been pressing himself against it, and his legs and his back ached. He couldn't pry his eyes away from the body. He swore he could still see Yaozhu's fingers twitching.

            "I don't expect we'll see each other again, Captain," Guan continued coolly, wringing his hands together as if to pull the death from his skin. "I'll leave you with your company."

            Guan left, Yaozhu stayed, and Mako stared. His whole body felt numb. His mind was numb, too. It was so numb that all he could do was stare. He couldn't even think about what he was seeing. All he knew was that twenty minutes ago Yaozhu had been alive and begging for his forgiveness. Now he was dead, and his lifeless yellow eyes had remained locked on Mako ever since.

            For a while after Guan left, Mako's mind racked with horrible, self-depreciating thoughts. It was all his fault. Yaozhu was dead. Bolin was dead. It was all his fault. He didn't protect the people he needed to. He trusted the wrong people. He'd lost confidence in himself. He'd lost his way entirely. His mind was clouded with confusion and indecision.

            After a time the shock wore away enough for other emotions to swell. Painfully, Mako drew himself into a tight little ball and stared out of the bars, and he worked very hard to keep himself from crying. He worked very hard to absolve himself of guilt. He worked very hard to rationalize, knowing that if he allowed himself to fall too far down the rabbit hole he'd never get back out.

            It wasn't his fault that Bolin was gone. He'd been hundreds of miles away. There was no way that Mako could have done anything more to warn the others that Bolin would be attacked. There was no way that he could have gotten word out more reliably without putting himself in danger, too. He had to take care of himself, otherwise he would never have the chance to gain what intelligence he had.

            Yaozhu hadn't been his fault either. It couldn't have been. All he'd done was involve Yaozhu in the operation. All he'd done was try to use Yaozhu as a diversion. He'd not invited the kid into Beifong's office to overhear their conversation. And he'd instructed Yaozhu explicitly to keep his mouth shut, and Yaozhu hadn't done it. He hadn't followed orders, and ultimately, that was what had caused him to die.

            It was hard to believe that when Yaozhu kept staring at him.

            Mako could no longer guess what would happen. Guan had made himself very clear on the matter of Mako's suffering. Guan's sole interest was causing Mako as much pain as possible, and now it was clear that it could be emotional or psychological or physical, and no matter how badly he'd be hurt or how much he wanted to give up, Guan wouldn't allow it. If Guan was to be believed, Mako had been dead. He'd been completely gone, and he'd been brought back. He didn't know how he'd been brought back, but it had happened.

            Against his will, Mako slept and dreamed of Yaozhu's struggling, and when he woke, Yaozhu's body was still there. It had started to disfigure. The eyes had started to bulge. The stiffness in its limbs extended beyond the arms to the rest of his body and the discoloration of the skin had begun to radiate from the neck. It was disgusting. It was inhuman, and the longer Mako stared at it the worse he felt.

            He wondered if they would ever take the body away, or if it would be left to rot before his eyes.

            Mako spent his waking hours staring at Yaozhu's bloating corpse and willing himself to believe that Beifong would follow through on his warnings. He had to believe that Beifong would send someone to help him. It was just a matter of time. It was just a matter of staying alive. Korra would show up. Asami would show up. Maybe Tenzin would show up. Someone would come to bail him out and take him home. Together they would overthrow this horrible organization, and maybe in time he'd be able to forget that any of this had ever happened.

            He had to keep believing. Even if it was a delusion, he had to keep believing, because the moment he stopped believing the hope would be lost, and if he lost hope he may as well lay on the floor beside Yaozhu and wait to join him in death.


	33. Fire Fountain City

            Bolin found it surprising how quickly he fell into pre-Zaofu habits. It was like it all had become second nature, the starving and the sleeplessness and the quiet, and in a certain way it had become therapeutic. It was nice to keep his thoughts to himself, to go through his days without worrying about having to answer to anyone for anything he did. But then, he really didn’t _do_ anything. He sat in the back of Oogi’s basket watching the world pass by and listening to the girls talk about whatever inane things crossed their minds. And he really didn't _say_ anything either, because saying things would involve him in their business, and he didn't want to be involved. Asami had made it very clear that the girls didn't want him to be involved, too, and that was perfectly okay with Bolin because it meant he was achieving distance.

            Distance would make things easier in the end.

            No one seemed to concern themselves with him, not until after he’d bailed on them during their stay in Omashu, and even then it had only been Korra. The whole Omashu experience had been stressful from the outset: Street merchants kept making comments about Bolin and Opal’s Zaofu-styled clothes, and more than once they were called a _lovely young couple_ and asked if they were _on honeymoon_. Bolin couldn’t stomach the constant reminders of how badly he’d screwed up, so five minutes after they’d arrived at their hotel he’d returned to the sky bison stables, stayed there for the rest of the evening, and passed the night outside in Oogi’s basket by himself. He figured that being alone was the best course of action, if only to eliminate any chance of another meltdown.

            He'd felt surprisingly stable, if extraordinarily gloomy, so that even Korra's gentle scolding didn't bother him all that much. He remembered a time when it did bother him, and he couldn't pinpoint exactly when that had changed. The void had opened up before they left Zaofu, and where it might have closed before, it didn't now. If anything, the void had widened and deepened and its pull left him numb and apathetic enough that only tiny pangs of guilt and regret broke through, and that was only where Opal was concerned. He didn't care about Korra.

            He'd done a poor job of hiding his neglect from her, but he'd not been trying very hard to keep it a secret. He hadn't needed to. No one else paid attention to him that he could see, and Korra had figured out by now that her admonishment would do little to change his track. That didn't mean she'd stop trying--Bolin doubted she'd ever stop trying--but it did mean that she was gentler about it, and Bolin appreciated that.

            Of the three girls, Korra was the only one who kept trying to speak to him, an unsurprising fact considering everything that had happened prior to leaving Zaofu. Korra checked in regularly and had even tried to stay awake through the nights with him, but she'd failed her attempt every time, and he always ended up watching her sleep until sunrise.

            Otherwise, if Bolin was to judge, Asami seemed a bit regretful of their final exchange. She'd made it clear that she wanted nothing to do with him before they left Zaofu, and he meant to grant her that desire. But then she'd asked him twice to help tie down the luggage--requests he'd patently ignored--and he'd seen her glancing occasionally at him over the fire at dinnertime when he woke and in the mornings before he made his way to Oogi's basket to sleep. He didn't tell her that he noticed the contradiction.

            The most difficult part was dealing with Opal. She seemed regretful, too, at least a little bit, because once in a while Bolin would catch her eyeing him longingly. She didn't really try to talk to him, though, and she didn't come near. He decided that all of it was for the best. He'd hurt her in so many ways that it seemed forcing distance would be the only way to guarantee he wouldn't hurt her again, and the only way to guarantee the distance was for Bolin to pretend that Opal wasn't there at all.

            The first two evenings when he woke, Opal had attempted to greet him as cordially as she could. The words had sounded a little strained, like she wasn't sure what to say or how to say it, but she'd at least uttered a _hello_ , and it hadn't been angry or cold. All the same, Bolin ignored it. He'd walked past her without acknowledging that she had spoken, without glancing at her or moving to avoid her gaze. He just walked and lived and functioned as though she didn't exist. He had to pretend she didn't exist, because if he stopped pretending he'd lose his drive to die.

            To his relief, Opal had stopped trying to speak to him entirely by the third day.

            As the time passed, Bolin felt himself growing progressively weaker, and he noted the change with grim satisfaction. It became easier to sleep and harder to wake up, and the drastic difference between his schedule and that which the girls followed made everything else virtually a non-issue. Korra was the only one who seemed to notice the changes in him, and for him, that didn't matter. He didn't care that she walked with him to and from every tree he peed on, and he didn't care that she watched him change his clothes. He didn't care that she saw the enormous, swollen bruise that had eaten up all of the left side of his torso, and he didn't care that every once in a while she saw him grimace or falter when he bent the wrong way.

            The first time Korra had seen the wound, she'd screamed at him at the top of her lungs, and the only reason Opal and Asami hadn't heard was because Bolin had walked a solid half-mile from their camp to bathe and change in private. He'd meant to avoid that issue entirely, but Korra wouldn't hear it. She'd belittled him and called him stupid and self-centered again, and reminded him that if he'd spoken up while they were still in Zaofu, she could've healed it. Now she couldn't do anything.

            All he'd been able to offer in response was a stilted shrug. The pain hadn't gone away over the days, but Bolin hadn't expected that it would. The longer he dealt with it, the more certain he was that Opal had done some serious structural damage, though he'd never know exactly what it was.

            He supposed it didn't matter. Soon enough pain would be a non-issue, too.

            The night before they arrived at Baihe Island, Korra sat beside him against Oogi's flank. She stayed up with him and managed to last most of the night. Though Bolin hadn't said much himself, Korra laid everything out as plain as she could: He counted five times she told him that she, Opal, and Asami loved him, and between those heartfelt admissions of love, Korra said that she was worried. She said that Opal and Asami were worried and that all three of them knew that he'd been neglecting himself more seriously now than he'd ever done before. He'd been blatant about it, even. They'd all seen the way he'd been acting, how slowly he'd been moving, and how restless his sleep had become. For her part, Korra knew he hadn't been eating. She'd known to watch for it. She seemed to know everything, and she'd figured out what he was planning to do.

            Well, she thought she'd figured it out, and her theory was close enough that it didn't really matter. Korra figured that he was going to be reckless to the point of suicide. She wasn't necessarily wrong, but she still hadn't hit the nail on the head. She hadn't suggested that he _meant_ to die. She hadn't figured out that he'd left Zaofu with no plan of going back. She hadn't insinuated that there was _intent_. Everything she suggested made it sound like he'd be leaving his fate to chance, but Bolin didn't like the idea of _chance_ , and he wasn't about to leave his fate to anyone but himself.

            Last time he'd done that, he'd wound up brain-dead in the hospital.

            That night, the void closed a little, and the pangs of guilt and regret lingered as he watched Korra cry. They weren't strong enough to force any emotion out of him, and he knew in the moment that if he'd been watching from the outside he would've been profoundly perturbed by his lack of reaction. Once upon a time he'd probably have cried right along with her. But he'd said it himself, and he'd said it straight to Korra's face: He'd lost the ability to empathize, and no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't understand why Korra wouldn't stop crying. He couldn't put himself in her position. He couldn't reverse their roles. All he could think was that if Korra was in the same situation he was in now and decided that she didn't want to live anymore, he'd honor her decision. He might not like it and he might not agree with it, but he'd honor it.

            In the end, there'd been some small part of him that couldn't stand seeing her so torn up, and he tried to comfort her as best he could. He didn't know what to do, so after a while he wrapped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close the same way he'd done almost every other time she'd cried at him, and she'd buried her forehead against the hard plate of his shoulder brace and wept until she exhausted herself and slept.

            He was glad that Opal and Asami had long since fallen asleep, because he wanted to cry, too, and if he broke, he didn't want anyone to see it. He didn't want them to see him sitting there in the dark holding Korra so intimately while she cried and while she slept, and that notion had him conflicted. All at once, he wanted to lay Korra down and walk away. He wanted to put as much distance between her and him as he could, both physically and emotionally. At the same time he cared too much to move. He _liked_ the closeness because it could very well be the last loving moment he would ever know.

            For a while, Bolin watched her and thought about everything that had led to this point. He thought about how he'd believed Mako had died and how Korra and Asami had helped him through the mourning. He thought about how he'd lost himself in his desperation after the fact. He thought about the collapse. He thought about the fact that Opal had dumped him so unceremoniously because of a kiss he didn't even remember, and he thought about how he'd been driven back into the void by the realization that Opal had been completely right.

            He sighed, and he thought for a few minutes about taking the initiative to wake Korra up and find out once and for all what it had felt like to kiss her. What more would he lose if he kissed her? After all, the damage had already been done, and this might be the last opportunity he'd ever have to do it. The thought left him feeling more empty than he'd started, and he settled for dropping his hand from her shoulder to the small of her waist and laying his head weakly back against Oogi's hind leg. Best to leave it in the past, he thought. Best to move on.

            For the first time since the arrangement had been made, Bolin fell asleep on his watch, and when he woke the next morning to find Korra still there curled against his shoulder, the void closed enough to allow the tiniest swell of warmth to course through his chest and into his stomach. It sat with a comfortable heaviness until she woke, and the moment was lost.

            In the end, Bolin was glad he'd fallen asleep, because the day of their arrival left little room for rest. While Korra set about rousing Opal and Asami, Bolin began the tedious process of preparing for their landing on Baihe Island. Seated in Oogi's basket, he changed into the sleeveless shirt Su had given him and clapped the metal braces over his wrists, then he retrieved the small packs that Korra had readied for them. Having checked them for supplies, he tied down the luggage he'd dislodged to do his digging. By the time he'd finished, the girls had torn down their camp, rolled up their sleeping bags, and settled themselves in Oogi's basket as well.

            Wordlessly, Bolin retrieved their bags and tied them down with the others, and while Opal and Asami gave him undeniably strange looks, they didn't say a word about his sudden helpfulness. Korra didn't say anything, either, but Bolin imagined that she wouldn't be saying much of anything to him for the rest of their time together. She'd said everything she needed to last night.

            Once Oogi had set off, Bolin watched the girls situate themselves in the center of the basket. He thought for a second about joining them, but stayed put in the end.

            "All right then," Asami said as she drew out her thoroughly annotated map and spread it in the middle of the basket, "we'll touch down on the southeast end of Baihe Island around seven o'clock tonight. That'll give us a couple hours before sunset to make any last minute changes to our plan and to scout around and see what's going on. We move in at sundown."

            Bolin had heard nothing of the plan to this point, and what little Asami said sounded ambitious. _Moving in_ implied that they knew where they were going, and the way she talked, it sounded like she wasn't anticipating trouble. He wanted to explain that he couldn't be so optimistic, but all he could say was, "And then what?" and the words came out of him so coldly that all three girls gaped at him.

            To be fair, it had been the only words he'd spoken to Asami or Opal since before they'd left Zaofu, and they hadn't exactly been friendly.

            "And then we find Mako," Asami replied plainly. She looked upset, but hadn't sounded it.

            " _How_?" Bolin replied. He worked hard but unsuccessfully to make the heat go out of his voice. He didn't want to scare the girls off again. "They're not going to have signs sitting out that say, _Hey, Mako is over here_ with a big flashing red arrow."

            "Well, no," Asami said thoughtfully, "they won't. But we should be able to look around and--"

            "I don't know if you've noticed, but none of us _looks_ like a firebender," Bolin said. "We can't just waltz around an encampment with hundreds of people in it asking everybody if they've heard of a guy named Mako."

            "No. I'm not saying that. What I'm saying is--"

            "That you have no idea what we're doing," Bolin finished for her, and from the look on Asami's face, she couldn't refute him. He felt guilty when she deflated and her eyes dropped back down to the map, so with a sigh, he continued, averting his eyes to the horizon. "It's okay if you don't know what we're doing, but you shouldn't make it sound like this is going to be easy."

            "I don't think any of us believe this is going to be easy," Asami said, but when she looked between Korra and Opal, neither of them offered any agreement. She glared back at Bolin like he'd offended her, but then her expression softened. "What do you suggest we do, then?"

            Bolin shrugged and winced at the motion. It had sent a shock of pain searing through his side and into his back. He didn't bother trying to play it off, either, and he noticed another, slightly more subtle shift in Asami's expression. It was a shift toward concern.

            "I don't know," Bolin said. "I'm not the plan guy, I'm the night watch jerk."

            By this time, Opal had perked up a bit, and she looked between Asami and Bolin without saying anything. Bolin didn't look back at her. He didn't acknowledge her at all. He could see her moving out of the corner of his eye, and he could see that her gaze had settled on him.

            "We're going to scout," said Opal tentatively, "tonight when we land, the first thing we're going to do is scout. That's the plan. I can see if I can find a high place to look down from and maybe get a look at what we're going into. I can try to figure out the layout of the city, and maybe I'll be able to spot something useful."

            Bolin wanted to tell her no. He wanted to tell her that scouting together was a dangerous enough prospect without her going off on her own and settling on some perch high above the town where she could be spotted and hunted down. Any kind of scouting seemed like a stupid idea, now he thought about it, because if this place truly was the stronghold for the group of terrorists who'd been recklessly attacking major cities, it would certainly be crawling with sentries and lookouts.

            But Bolin didn't say anything to Opal. He didn't look at Opal. He didn't acknowledge that she'd spoken. He had to keep pretending she didn't exist and he had to keep forcing himself to maintain the distance.

            Much to his dismay, Korra and Asami agreed with Opal's plan, and the opportunity to argue the matter was gone.

            The conversation died away, and the girls retreated to their corners while Bolin took again to watching the scenery. He'd never seen the Fire Nation before outside of the pictures in Jinora's books, and even then he'd not looked closely. There existed a marked difference in the terrain between the United Republic and the archipelago of the Fire Nation: The distant ground had seemed to take on a reddish, rusted hue like clay or granite, and where the United Republic was littered with trees and greenery, the islands had only dots of vegetation clustered around small lakes and rivers. 

            They flew along the Fire Nation's south border, steering clear of the islands by a long stretch. They passed Kaju City, the last vestige of civilization they would see until Fire Fountain City, and it was small and seemed barely populated.

            That was a feature of the Fire Nation, Bolin supposed, that most of its islands were almost wholly uninhabited. Most of the towns and cities had popped up around its capitol and extended to the east from there, and beyond the cluster of islands surrounding the main continent there wasn't much. Water sources were a scarce commodity and if he was to judge by color alone, the ground seemed unsuitable for agriculture. Most of the islands served as home to massive active mountain ranges, and even Baihe Island was cut in half by a long spine of mountains at whose midsection rose a large volcano. Outside of rock and mineral, Bolin couldn't imagine what resources could come from such a desolate, desert-like place.

            As they flew over the stretch of the Silver Sea that separated Orchard Island from Baihe Island, Korra hopped up and sat atop Oogi's head to steer him down and around. They made their final approach so low to the water that Oogi's feet occasionally broke the waves, spraying a fine, cool mist into the basket.

            It was a nice reprieve from the heat, and it seemed to set everyone at ease.

            They touched down on a stretch of beach on the island's eastern side that had been overtaken by weeds and vines and assorted creepers coming down from the trees.    The blackish sand was rough and littered with stones, giving the place a wholly neglected air.

            Oogi's feet had barely touched ground when Opal hopped from the basket onto the beach, and Korra followed along behind.

            "I'm going to go with, just in case," Korra had said, and it seemed she was talking more to Bolin than she was to Asami. "If we're not back before sundown, come find us."

            Bolin hadn't had the chance to argue. Korra and Opal took off too fast, and he was left to share an uncomfortable, unpleasant silence with Asami.

            She occupied herself with her maps and her bags while Bolin paced up and down the beach in his bare feet. He felt a little useless, and he felt a little nervous, but more than anything there hung a dread inside him that overshadowed the rest. He'd gone for so many days without feeling the anxiety he'd felt in Zaofu, but now it had come back full force, and though he was certain he'd not eaten anything in a full twenty-four hours he felt like he might be sick. It was like his whole stomach had fallen out and left a gaping hole of worry, and the longer he paced and the longer Korra and Opal stayed away, the deeper the hole became. As much as he hated them, he didn't want them to be hurt.

            When Opal and Korra finally returned, the sun had sunk low enough to kiss the horizon, and a gentle darkness fell over their temporary camp. Asami seemed happy to have them back, and she welcomed them with dried food and cups of tea, but Bolin stayed away, agitated. He'd been ready to set out looking for them, but hadn't known how to approach Asami about the matter. He hadn't wanted to upset her again.

            Korra explained that the scouting had been fruitful. She and Opal had trekked across the high hills toward the northwest, through a valley running between the volcano and the surrounding peaks, and had come across a clearing where they might stow Oogi away until they'd returned. The clearing, she explained, sat high enough to remain obscured from the rest of the island but not so high as to be inaccessible, and it overlooked Fire Fountain City in its entirety.

            They had seen the city. Opal made a crude drawing of it on the back of Asami's map, on which she pointed out various buildings and landmarks. She drew her finger along the route that she and Korra agreed would lead them into the heart of the island and take them past a number of buildings that she said looked like apartments. She imagined that if they were sneaky enough, they could look into the rooms from the outside.

            The only problem they might encounter was a series of courtyards separating the buildings. Korra said that there had been groups of people gathered in them at all different times and places seemingly at random, and pairs of sentries patrolled in the alleys between the buildings.

            They would have to be careful.

            With little daylight remaining, the four clambered back into Oogi's basket and set off for Fire Fountain City.

            The clearing that Korra and Opal had described was a low, flat spot between two foothills that was shaded and secluded. To one side, there rose a gentle swell of hills, and to the other side, beyond a section of smaller mountains, an enormous peak jutted into the sky, which emitted a gently wafting plume of smoke.

            It took longer than Bolin wanted for the girls to make themselves ready, for Asami to dig out her Equalist's Glove and for Korra to meditate and for Opal to squirm into her wingsuit. It took some effort not to watch her. He'd always found something ridiculously alluring about the way she moved to get into the effectively skin-tight garment, but it had always been more alluring when she got out of it.

            Bolin shook the memory out of his head and walked to the far end of the clearing to be alone. He stared out across the water at Orchard Island and thought he could make out tiny dots of light from Kaju City. The nerves were coming back. Every time he considered what he was about to do, his blood ran a little colder.

            For a few moments a silence fell over their camp. Bolin couldn't hear the girls rustling around behind him, and Oogi had seemed to go still. There was nothing, not even the crashing of the waves on the beach, and unbidden thoughts about eternal nothingness sprang back into Bolin's head that left him dizzy and afraid. If he'd been at home, he was sure he'd have panicked, but Bolin knew he couldn't do that now. He had to keep a straight face and keep his mind on the level. If he panicked now, he'd prove everyone right. He'd be a liability and he'd be a threat, and all the horrible things that Asami had said to him would be true.

            He could get them all killed, and that wasn't part of the plan.

            He didn't want to take anyone with him.

            "I wanted to talk to you before we go."

            Bolin froze. Somehow in the swelling anxiety, he hadn't heard Opal come up behind him. He hadn't been able to feel her in his feet. She startled him, but he didn't show it. He couldn't show it. He had to pretend like she didn't even exist.

            He didn't turn around. He jammed his hands in his pockets and stared at his feet.

            Opal drew a very deep breath and blew out an enormous sigh, and now that Bolin was focused he could feel her. He missed her.

            "What we're about to do is really dangerous," she said quietly, her voice scarcely above a whisper, "and I think we both know that. It would be stupid to pretend that it's not." She paused. He felt her tapping her toe against the ground. She'd always done that when she was nervous. "I... I wanted you to know that despite everything that's happened between us, I still love you. I really do. It's been hard to watch you the last few days, because all I've wanted to do is help you and make you feel better. I know I was mad at you when I found out what happened, you know, between you and Korra, but the longer I thought about it the more I realized that I treated you really unfairly. I never should have hit you. I'm sorry."

            She stopped like she expected him to say something, but he wouldn't. He couldn't. He could barely even breathe without feeling some weird shaking in his chest that set the bruise to burning. Opal had said the exact words he'd wanted to hear out of her ever since their falling out, but he couldn't respond. The decision had been made. He'd hurt her too much. He'd come too far to give in now.

            When she wrapped her hands around his elbow from behind, he thought for certain he'd break down.

            "I want you to know that when this is all done and when we're back home safe, I want to make things work. I want to try again."

            Bolin took a deep breath to keep from sobbing, and he closed his eyes. What could he say? What could he do? He was too far gone, and even if he came back and tried to make things work again, it was too risky. He blew up at everyone for everything; he'd lost his ability to temper himself. If he and Opal struck things up again, only for him to lose control and hit her or worse, he'd never be able to forgive himself.

            He already couldn't forgive himself.

            "Please say something to me," she begged quietly. "Say anything. Please, just talk to me."

            He didn't, and he wouldn't.

            In what must have been a final, desperate move, Opal threw herself against him and buried her face in his back, her hands locked together tight around his chest. He felt her shudder, and he felt a wet spot develop on his shirt. Every instinct told him to turn around and wrap her up and somehow make her stop crying, but his mind wouldn't let him. His mind kept rolling through the same old loop: He'd hurt her, and he'd pushed her away, and by pushing her away he'd hurt her even more, and the only way to keep himself from hurting her again was to increase the distance. The only way to keep himself from hurting her again was to leave, and there was only one way to go.

            Opal didn't cry for long. The whole interaction might have taken five minutes, but it had been the most emotional five minutes Bolin had experienced in a while. Eventually she loosened her grip and she stepped away, but Bolin could still feel her eyes on his back and the wet spot on his shirt where her tears had soaked in. It was cold.

            "Bolin, please say something to me," Opal said with a sniffle. She sounded so distressed.

            Bolin turned, and through his feet he could feel Opal tense in hopeful anticipation. But he didn't look at her. He steeled his face and kept his eyes narrowed and locked on the red-brown dirt, and then he walked straight past her the same way he'd walked past her every day since they'd left Zaofu. When he'd gone, he felt her hope die and heard her sniffling again.

            He put on his shoes. He didn't want to feel her again.

            On the other side of the clearing, Korra and Asami seemed to have been having their own intimate conversation, and it looked as though it hadn't gone very well but hadn't been as catastrophic as his and Opal's. On the one hand, their relationship had never been quite as serious as his and Opal's had, and as far as he knew, they had maintained an amiable relationship through the mess. But Korra looked moderately upset, and Asami looked more than moderately upset, and by the time the four of them gathered up and set off down the hill toward Fire Fountain City, the tension had grown heavy again.

            Bolin followed beside Korra, behind Asami and Opal, and as they crept along, the sadness he felt over Opal turned to nervousness that filled him to the brim and threatened to boil over into full blown panic. When they reached the edge of the city his throat had closed, his chest had tightened, and his breath was coming in quick, quiet gasps. He wasn't even sure what he was afraid of. Walking into the city like this meant certain death, but wasn't that the point? All he had to do was keep Opal, Korra, and Asami safe, and everything else would fall into place.

            Korra startled him when she touched his arm, and when he looked at her she'd assumed the expression that universally said, "Are you okay?"

            After that, Bolin worked harder to steady himself.

            In the silence, the four of them crept around the backs of multi-storied red brick buildings, and Asami peered into what windows she could. Every time, she came back with a blank expression and a shrug, and they moved on down the line.

            It didn't take long for things to go south. Asami was so focused on peering into the windows that she didn't look before wandering into an alley. Bolin grabbed her by the arm and jerked her back, but he could feel movement. There had been a sentry, and that sentry was coming closer.

            "Hey," said a voice, "what's going on over here?"

            The alley illuminated with firelight, and suddenly the four of them were face to face with a uniformed guard who seemed just as surprised to see them as they were to see him.

            In an instant, the surprise dropped from the man's face. Then he thrust his fist into the air, sending forth a tall column of fire, and Bolin sprang to action. He knew what was coming. The guard had called for support. They would be ambushed. They'd be caught and then all their hope of finding Mako would be lost.

            Bolin knew he couldn't earthbend to stop the guard: Doing so would create too much noise. Opting for more manual means, he lunged forward, his fist leading the way, and caught the guard squarely in the stomach before he could utter a word. And when the guard doubled over from the first blow, he took Bolin's knee straight to the forehead and fell unmoving to the ground.

            "Well, that's one down," Bolin said dryly. "Only a few hundred left."

            He didn't want the girls to know that the movement had left him winded, nor that the very sight of firebending had his heart pounding out of his chest. He hoped the sarcasm would hide it.

            "We have to get out of here," Asami ordered. "Someone will have seen that."

            Asami set off once more, her pace quickened as she weaved aimlessly between buildings. She was nervous now. Bolin could feel it in her the same way he felt the nervousness in Korra and Opal. They didn't know where they were going. They didn't know what they were doing. Here they were, wandering around in a place crawling with hostiles looking for Mako, and they didn't even know where to start.

            Once again, Bolin reached forward and grabbed Asami's arm to halt her, but this time it wasn't because of the sentries. He'd felt something, and it was something new. It wasn't any of the girls and it wasn't Oogi and it wasn't any familiar vibration he'd experienced before. It felt like footsteps, but he couldn't be sure.

            "What's wrong?" Korra asked. "What--"

            "Ssh!" Bolin hissed. He stared hard at the ground, still clutching Asami's arm and willing all his concentration into his feet. Whatever it was had come from below. "I think there's a tunnel."

            The girls fell silent, as though they might be able to feel it, too, if only they were quiet enough. But instead, in the momentary silence there came a terrifyingly familiar noise that raised the tiny hairs on the back of Bolin's neck and rooted him to the spot.

            At the same time he noticed Asami's horrified expression gaping down the alleyway behind, Bolin heard the popping of combustion, and his whole body froze like a solid block of ice. His mind blanked. He couldn't move.

            "Go!"

            He didn't know who'd screamed the words and he didn't know who'd grabbed him roughly by the right arm to jerk him out of the way. But he knew that it had hurt badly enough to make his head spin and that the pulling had threatened to dislodge his shoulder, brace or not. He felt the heat of the explosion on his back. Then he hit the ground hard, and a million mortified thoughts dislodged to flood his mind.

            They'd been spotted. They'd been found. He'd not taken out the guard fast enough. They'd been attacked. It was a combustion bender. Last time he'd been attacked by a combustion bender, he'd almost died. He'd fallen and fallen and fallen and then the whole world had landed on top of him. He hadn't been able to see, but he'd been able to hear. He'd heard the sound of his body twisting, and he'd heard the sound of the metal bending and the glass shattering and the rock settling atop him. He hadn't been able to breathe beneath the weight of the building. He hadn't been able to breathe beneath the weight of death.

            He couldn't breathe beneath the weight of his panic.

            He didn't know whose wrist he grabbed when he jumped to his feet, and he didn't know to where he was running, but as the bolts of combustion bloomed into fireballs at his heels he sprinted as fast as his exhausted legs would carry him. Every few strides, he squinted his eyes closed and shook his head to clear the panic away, but it wasn't his head that was the problem. It was his body driving the panic now, and he couldn't hope to stop it. He was breathing too hard, he was running too fast, and he knew that if he slowed down even a little bit, he wouldn't be the only one dead in the end.

            That hadn't been part of the plan.

            He didn't want to take anyone with him.

            "Up! Get us up!"

            Bolin's eyes darted skyward, and he knew what the voice meant. The roof. If he could get them to the roof it would be all but impossible for the firebenders to follow. They could take the high road and escape.

            Somehow, he managed to cry, "Hang on!" in a trembling, horrified voice, and a pair of arms wrapped tight around his chest and beneath his arms, stealing his breath away when they squeezed against the bruise. Still, he grounded himself and thrust his fists upward. A pillar of earth shot up beneath his feet, propelling him to the mark.

            The landing wasn't pretty. He couldn't maintain enough balance to keep his feet beneath him, and a combustion bolt exploded in the air immediately to his left, knocking him sideward so that his shoulder hit the roof first, and whomever it was that had been holding on to him sprawled on top of him hard.

            Bolin heard a definitive _snap_.

            He reeled with the pain and lay there with his forehead pressed into the red clay shingling. He wanted to throw up all over again. It felt as though something was stabbing into his shoulder. It wasn't the feeling of dislocation: It was different, but it was just as bad.

            "Bo, get up!"

            The voice came out a familiar shriek, and Bolin realized that he'd grabbed Asami. He wasn't sure if he felt disappointed at that, but there was some kind of dread in his stomach that only got stronger when she wrapped her arms around him and heaved him to his feet. Her heart was racing, too. He could feel it.

            To Bolin's relief, he didn't have to lead the way. Asami pointed and rushed off over the rooftops, picking her footing as carefully as she dared in her haste. From this high, Bolin could see that they'd been spotted somewhere near the center of the city, very near to what looked like a fountain spewing fire into the sky. He didn't pay much attention to it. There were still blasts of fire coming at them from the ground, interspersed with combustion bolts that came too close for comfort. Every time one of them exploded, Bolin felt his heartbeat quicken until his palms had gone sweaty and he felt he might faint. Every time he heard one, he heard the building falling. Every time he saw the red flash of fire bolts, he saw the rocks tumbling down. He imagined the tiny blue dot of sky that he'd believed so strongly would be the last thing he'd ever see. But Asami held his hand so tight that it hurt, and she wasn't about to stop long enough to let him fall.

            "What do we do?" she cried. "What do we do?"

            "Inside," Bolin said through panted breaths. "Get inside. We can take them in close quarters. We can lose them."

            He stumbled but caught himself before he fell.

            He hadn't been ready for this kind of action. He hadn't been ready to handle such an intense panic. He didn't know why it had hit him so hard.

            Bolin suddenly realized that there was no way he'd be able to keep up for half as long as he imagined he'd be able to, and for the first time he regretted neglecting himself. He wished that he'd taken better care. He'd never be able to protect Asami in the shape he was in right now, let alone protecting Korra and Opal, too.

            "Get us over there!"

            Bolin looked up from the ground to see Asami pointing at a darkened building across the way lined with balconies and what looked to be easily-breakable glass doors. It was a sizeable distance away--far enough that Bolin imagined they wouldn't be followed, but getting them there would take an enormous effort.

            Asami didn't slow down as she approached the edge of the roof down which they currently barreled, and Bolin knew that she hadn't recognized the trouble he was having. She hadn't recognized how difficult it would be for him to get them across the gap. He wasn't sure why he'd expected her to. She hadn't paid any attention to him in days. She'd probably assumed that he was just as strong as he'd ever been. She hadn't watched him fall apart.

            A few yards away from the roof's edge, Bolin ripped his hand out of Asami's grasp and gave a mighty, desperate leap forward. At the same time his feet planted into the clay tile, Asami caught up with him, and the stone beneath them shot upward like an enormous catapult, launching them across the alley to the adjacent building.

            Bolin landed more gracefully this time, his feet underneath him, but the impact drove him to take a knee. Whatever it was that had taken to stabbing his shoulder had only gotten worse, and he grabbed at it to make sure he'd not knocked it out. To his relief, it was still intact, but something had gone wrong with the brace. The plating must have snapped, and the way it broke had set its jagged edges to prying mercilessly at the joint.

            "Come on!"

            Again, Asami had him by the arm, but this time she didn't run. This time she dropped from the roof onto the balcony above which they'd landed, and she crouched and pulled Bolin low.

            As he reeled, Bolin wondered why she didn't just break the glass and go inside, but he supposed that doing so would be more trouble than it was worth. The sound of so much glass breaking would draw attention back to them, and it seemed that for the time being, they'd escaped.

            The two minutes it took Asami to pick the lock felt agonizingly long, and by the time she slid the door open, Bolin had slumped heavily, clutching at the stitch burning in his bruised side and wishing that he'd stayed in Zaofu.

            Asami pulled him inside, and the moment she turned her back to explore the darkened room, he clumsily dropped to his knees on the ground.

            "What's wrong with you?" she cried in a hushed voice. "What's going on?"

            Bolin could've laughed, had he not been in such insurmountable pain. Where was he supposed to start? What _wasn't_ wrong with him?

            Instead, he shook his head and sat there for a few more seconds to catch his breath. Then he extended his hand upward, hopeful that Asami might help him to his feet.

            She did, and as soon as he'd stood up he regretted it. He faltered, lurched forward, and had it not been for Asami's quick reaction he'd have fallen straight back down again.

            "I just need a minute," he said, hoping to head her off before she could ask more questions. "I just need a second. I just need to breathe..."

            "You're panicking, aren't you?"

            Unashamed, he nodded. It wasn't wholly a lie, and the admission would get Asami off his case, he'd make it gladly.

            "Korra warned me you might," Asami continued, a dull venomous edge to her voice. She hooked Bolin's arm around her shoulders and pulled him upright, and as she did, Bolin remembered what she'd said to him about his panics: If he broke down in the middle of the rescue, he'd do more harm than good.

            And here he was, breaking down. Here he was, proving her right.

            "We can't go back outside," Asami said gently as she led him forward. "If we go back outside they'll fry us. I don't know that they saw us come in here, and we're alone. It looks to me like this is some kind of apartment."

            Bolin nodded, but he was sure that Asami couldn't see it.

            "We should look around. Maybe we'll find something."

            "That's pretty optimistic, don't you think?"

            "Someone's got to be."

            Bolin followed Asami carefully out of the room under his own strength. She maneuvered slowly around, peeking into the hallway before she led them forward, watching for people and pausing every once in a while to listen and to ask him if he felt anyone around. It seemed like the place was deserted, and Bolin wondered out loud if anyone who might once have been in this building had been called out to chase them.

            Eventually they came upon a wide landing decorated with couches and tables and comfortable plush chairs, and Asami dropped low to the ground to creep ahead. Bolin followed suit, but it hurt, and together they approached the balustrade overlooking the area below.

            It appeared to be some kind of foyer, and though it was empty, Bolin could hear voices carrying. It seemed that Asami could hear them, too, as she led him forward with hand motions instead of direct commands, and they crept silently down the stairs.

            From the bottom stair, Bolin could see from where the voices were coming. Directly across the way, through a wide open door, a huge room had been packed with men of all shapes and sizes, all of whom wore the same brick red clothes and sat at trestle tables laden with food.

            It seemed they'd caught them during dinner.

            With a tug on his arm, Asami drew Bolin quickly away from the staircase, to the right and around the corner into a new hall which mirrored the one from which they had just come.

            "We can't stay here," Asami whispered. "If they leave that room we're dead. We've got to get out of here and find Korra and Opal. You said you felt a tunnel earlier, didn't you?"

            Again, he nodded.

            "Well, we're on the ground floor now, aren't we? Can you feel anything?"

            "I don't know that it was actually a tunnel," Bolin explained in a pained whisper. "I just felt something moving around below us, and I figured that if something was moving, it had to have somewhere to go."

            "Can you get us down there?"

            "I don't know if it's even there!"

            "Keep your voice down, stupid!"

            Bolin felt himself tense, and when he growled, "Don't call me stupid," Asami tensed, too, and what had once been a look of frustration changed to one of deepest worry. "I'm not a Beifong, Asami. I can't see tunnels like they can. Lin and Su never taught me how to do it."

            "Well, try!"

            Bolin looked at his feet, half ashamed and half determined to make the effort. It would've been easier with his shoes off, but there was no way he was going to take the time to sit down and remove them. Instead, he knelt down and placed his palms flat on the floor, and he focused the small part of his mind that hadn't been consumed by panic on listening to the earth.

            "Can you get us down there?" Asami asked after a while.

            "If you can find a plain spot of ground I can open it up," Bolin replied, "but I can't guarantee it won't leave a mark that can be followed. What I can tell you for sure is that whatever it is goes that way." He pointed toward the end of the hallway they'd entered.

            "Let's go."

            Bolin stood with a labored grunt, and though Asami gave him another strange look, she set off down the way with as silent of footsteps as she could. Bolin felt like a lumbering beast compared to her. His breathing was loud, and he felt like his feet were slamming against the floor. As he walked behind her, he clutched his hand against the bruise and grimaced. It throbbed almost as badly as his shoulder, and against his will something like a groan came out of him. He struggled to stifle the noise.

            At the end of the hall sat a single closed door, and Asami opened it to reveal a roughly hewn stone stairwell leading into the earth.

            "Found it," she said plainly. Then she followed it down.

            "Asami," Bolin called as they descended. He hoped she might stop, but Asami kept walking, and seemed to be distracted with her pack, from which she eventually produced a flashlight. "Asami?"

            She didn't turn around until they'd come to the bottom of the stairs, where the tunnel branched off in several directions including back the way they'd come, and even then, she looked at him with expectation, as if she expected him to tell her where to go.

            "I need to stop."

            "What?"

            Bolin took a breath and swallowed hard. "I need… to stop."

            "What's the matter?"

            Bolin took five steps down one of the hallway's branches and slumped against the wall, exhausted. He made no effort to respond to Asami's question, and when she kneeled in front of him she looked profoundly concerned.

            "Hey, I can't have you falling apart on me," she said gently but urgently. "We have to go. We can't sit here."

            Bolin shook his head and groped at his side. "I just need a second. Just let me sit for a second."

            "Bolin, what's the matter?" Asami asked again after a few moments of silence. She sounded afraid now, but he didn't look up to verify it. There was a distinct trembling in her voice. "Are you okay?"

            He shook his head and laid it back against the wall. "I need a minute," he breathed.

            "You're not... You're not going to faint on me again, are you?"

            "Shut up."

            "I'm sorry." It sounded to Bolin like she meant it. "Look, I'm sorry. I really am. I know you're mad at me about what I said when we were at Zaofu. I was just afraid. But I'm more afraid now. I made a mistake. I feel like what I said... Like it made you worse somehow. Korra told me what you've been doing to yourself. She told me right before we came here. I couldn't live with myself if what I said caused you to... to hurt yourself." She faltered and fell silent for a second, and Bolin heard her swallow very hard. "I want to help you. I'm not blind. I can see how hard of a time you're having and I want to help, but you have to let me. If you don't let me help you, we're toast."

            Bolin did laugh this time, a low and quiet laugh that hurt his chest. "That's _great_ ," he said coldly.

            "What's great? Let me help you, please. Let me see what's going on there, you've been holding your side like that since before we left."

            She tried to pry his hand away from his chest, but that only made Bolin angry. The cycle had kicked in again. The panic he'd felt was changing again. He was mad at himself for panicking and proving her right, and he was mad at her for trying to take back what she'd said just because they were in danger.

            The bright side of the matter was that the anger dulled the pain, and within a few minutes he'd managed to pull himself back to his feet.

            "Let's go," he said in as firm a voice as he could muster. "You're right. We've got to keep moving."

 

*****

 

            Korra had never seen a look quite like the one Bolin assumed when he'd heard the combustion bolt. She'd never seen someone freeze like he had, and she was certain that if she hadn't screamed at them all to move, he would've been caught square in the back. It had looked to her like the panic had come on him again, but it was a different panic than before. It wasn't quiet, but it wasn't loud either. It looked like it had fallen over him like a terrible veil and rendered his whole mind incapable of communicating with his body.

            He looked like she'd felt after she'd been poisoned, when every time she tried to go into the Avatar State she'd seen visions of herself as a horrifying, uncontrollable monster. She wondered if something in the combustion bolt had triggered a memory in him the same way. He hadn't dealt with firebending of any kind since the accident, let alone combustion. It wasn't out of the realm of possibility that experiencing it now could cause an issue.

            But Asami had grabbed him and practically thrown him aside, and Korra grabbed Opal and practically threw her aside. By the time Korra righted herself, Bolin and Asami had disappeared and Korra and Opal were left in the middle of the alley facing an onslaught of angry firebenders.

            Without time to worry about the others, Korra and Opal set to action. Opal jumped straight to her feet to begin deflecting the fireballs and combustion bolts using her airbending, and Korra followed to provide the offense. They worked together well as a team, and where Korra couldn't defend herself, Opal stepped in. When Opal couldn't defend herself, Korra stepped in.

            First, one combustion bender fell down under the weight of a blast of compressed air that Opal had thrown at him point-blank, and Korra pulled a slab of earth over him to pin him to the ground. In her recovery, Korra noted a second taking aim at Opal. She ripped a chunk of stone from the ground to throttle toward him, and when it connected, he dropped.

            It seemed that in the face of their two fallen comrades, the others weren't sure what to do. They hesitated. Korra grabbed Opal by the wrist and dragged her away at a full sprint.

            Opal pulled away and darted ahead, scouting around to find an escape route. She directed Korra through a wide open courtyard in which there stood the decapitated statue from which Fire Fountain City had gotten its name, and into a section of narrow alleys between larger, taller buildings.

            Whenever Korra glanced behind, she could see flashes of red-orange fire lighting the sky all around, and she could hear the distant sounds of combustion. It was exactly like Bolin had said: They'd wandered into a spider-wasp nest, and the spider-wasps had started to swarm.

            Opal caught Korra off guard when she pulled her roughly through a door and into a nondescript, dark building. She closed the door softly behind them, and the two girls crouched with their backs to the door. Korra worked hard to listen for their pursuers to pass by, but she could scarcely hear a thing over the sound of her and Opal's heavy breathing.

            "Where are Bolin and Asami?" Opal whispered between breaths. "What happened to them?"

            Korra shook her head. "I don't know. I think they ran."

            Opal dropped her head into her hands.

            "They weren't hit," Korra said, as much reassurance as she could offer. "There weren't bodies. Asami pulled Bo out of the way, and they fell down about the same time we did. The next time I looked up they were gone."

            Opal nodded, and then she snapped to attention and clapped her hands over her mouth. She looked at Korra with wide eyes, and for a moment, Korra didn't know why. The answer came before Korra could ask, in the form of an army's worth of footsteps rushing past the door.

            "Let's move," Korra whispered after they'd gone, and she set off into the building.

            The whole place was dark, and Korra had to conjure a flame in her hand to light the way. They passed through a wide room that looked something like a small theater, with rows of seats lined up before a massive projection screen. That room opened into a long, narrow corridor lined at even intervals with heavy metal doors, each of which bore a small slatted window.

            Korra peered into a few of these rooms as she could, utterly confused by what was inside. The rooms seemed exactly identical, and they were tiny enough that she doubted she'd be able to lay flat on her back inside of one. Every one of them contained at least one chair faced away from the door, though a few housed a second.

            "What is this place?" Opal whispered. She jiggled the handle on one of the doors, but it didn't open. "I don't understand."

            "Lockup of some kind," Korra replied, her best guess. "Maybe Mako will be here."

            With a shrug, Opal followed Korra through the hallway, looking into every door they could and coming up empty handed every time.

            As they went, the sinking feeling in Korra's stomach grew. Something about the place was eerie and unsettling. It might've been the metal doors or the tiny rooms or the fact that it all looked like an enormous prison, but there was something here that frightened her.

            "I hope Bolin and Asami are okay," Opal mused as they searched. "I really hope they're okay."

            "They'll be fine," Korra replied as confidently as she dared. "They can take care of themselves."

            She wasn't sure that she believed it even as she said it. She couldn't shake the feeling that they _wouldn't_ be okay. Asami and Bolin hadn't said two words to each other until they'd set down here, and the few words they'd exchanged since then had been tense and unpleasant. Korra worried that they might be stuck together, but they'd never _work_ together.

            Worse, Bolin had started falling apart before they'd ever set out. Walking beside him into the city, he'd looked like a complete wreck, like he'd already started panicking just by virtue of thinking about what they were doing. His breathing had been fast and his eyes had been wide, and every move he made seemed to have the slightest twitching quality to it.

            Then there had been his reaction to the combustion bending, and that certainly didn't ease Korra's nerves. If he froze once he was liable to freeze again. There must have been something in the back of his mind that horrified him, something the combustion bending triggered that amplified the terror and immobilized him.

            "Hey," Opal said all at once, and Korra looked up. Opal had assumed a new posture, a slightly aggressive posture, and she was staring hard at Korra like she was angry.

            Korra didn't know why Opal could be angry.

            "What's going on between you and Bolin?" Opal asked.

            "Nothing," Korra replied. "Why?"

            "I don't believe you," Opal said. "I tried to talk to him today."

            Korra said nothing, but she watched Opal's shifting body language very carefully. She couldn't tell if Opal was more angry or more sad or more scared.

            "He didn't say anything to me, Korra. He didn't even _look_ at me."

            "Why does that mean there's something going on between him and me?" asked Korra, a genuine curiosity about her. "I don't see the connection."

            "Well I've seen how much you two have been together lately, since we left, I mean. I've seen the way you act around each other."

            "How's that?"

            "Like you like him."

            Korra's brows peaked, then furrowed, and she settled into complete confusion. Opal wasn't necessarily _wrong_ on the matter, but now seemed like a bad time to discuss it.

            "I saw you two sleeping together last night."

            Korra couldn't refute it. She hadn't meant to fall asleep on him, but it had been so late and she'd exhausted herself with all the crying and with all the trying to get him to come back to reason. She didn't remember falling asleep. She just knew that she'd woke up that morning with his arm around her waist all warm and comfortable, and the fluttering had come back, but then it had gone again just as fast.

            "This isn't the time, Opal," Korra said at last. She wasn't going to argue the matter. "We've got work to do."

            Opal glared, but Korra kept herself from reacting. She had to turn on _Avatar Mode_ to keep her personal feelings as separate as possible from the task at hand. They needed to find Asami and Bolin, regroup, and find Mako, and they needed to do it before anything else happened.

            "Let's go," Korra said. "There's nothing here."

            As she led Opal back down the corridor, Korra decided aloud that they would check every building they could while working their way back toward the spot where they had been separated from the others. With any luck at all, Asami and Bolin would have the same idea, and they'd be able to rendezvous with little trouble.

            They couldn't be so lucky.

            Korra cracked the exterior door to the building and peeked outside to see firelight flickering off of every surface at every angle, like the whole island had been set ablaze. They must have increased the guard. Someone must have warned them that the Avatar was on the way.

            "How do we get out?" Opal asked in a hoarse whisper, peeking over Korra's shoulder. It seemed in the moment that her frustration had been forgotten.

            "I don't know," Korra said. She looked up and down the alley immediately outside. "We might as well go head-first and deal with the guards as we see them. Maybe try to get into another building to hide when we need to. It'll be hard with so many people around."

            "Okay."

            Korra threw the door open wide and jumped into the alley. She turned to the left and fired a blast of air, and behind her she could hear Opal doing the same, and as soon as the guards had fallen, she grabbed Opal's hand and tore down the way.

            It didn't take long for the firebenders to tail them, but instead of turning to fight, the two girls kept running. When they came to a second courtyard, they stopped and rounded on their pursuers.

            Opal conjured a vortex that pushed the firebenders back, and as they tossed fire and combustion bolts at them, Korra deflected what Opal's vortex didn't dispel. Between, she lobbed chunks of earth as hard as she could, and to her delight managed to catch two more firebenders off guard. She couldn't take the combustion benders, though. Her earthbending wasn't half as precise as Bolin's was, and manipulating tiny pebbles as he'd once done seemed impossible.

            They would just have to avoid the combustion.

            Slowly, Opal drew back and Korra stayed near. Despite their best efforts, more and more firebenders gathered and fired, and while Opal's airbending took most of the shots high and wide, a few threatened to cut through.

            "We've got to run!" Korra cried. Then she gathered her strength and drew and enormous slab of earth from the ground and heaved it effortfully toward the throng, and as it flew she pulled a second slab to act as a protective barrier. Behind that, she pushed Opal along by the shoulder and darted off once more.

            Another darkened building presented itself, and Korra kicked the door open, pushed Opal inside, and slammed it behind her. She drew a slab of earth from the ground to reinforce the entry.

            "How many are there?" Opal cried. "They won't stop!"

            Korra gazed around the building. They'd arrived in a wide square room with a few doors here and there. It seemed like a storage shed of some kind.

            "We hide," Korra said, a little frantic herself. "We hide and then we figure out what to do when things die down."

            Opal rushed into the space and began pulling at the doors while Korra kept an eye on the exterior. She didn't know what Opal was finding, if anything at all, until in a surprised, tremulous voice, Opal cried her name and Korra whirled about.

            "Staircase!"

            Korra bolted.

            The exterior door blew open, rock reinforcement and all.

            Korra fell down.

            Opal shrieked.

            A burst of air rushed over Korra's head.

            She jumped back to her feet to face the onslaught. Firebender after firebender pushed through the now-gaping hole where the door had once been, and Korra threw everything she had at them. She felt confident until the combustion started. She felt mortified when a bolt of lightning flashed three inches above her head.

            "Opal! Go!" Korra cried. "Go!"

            "No!"

            Another combustion bolt rocketed through the space, and Korra deflected it wide with a well-timed burst of air. It crashed into the ceiling and blew another hole through the rock and wood.

            "Get out of here! Now! Go find Bolin and Asami! I'll keep them occupied!"

            A third combustion bolt flew above Korra's head, connecting with the ceiling and dropping another round of stone debris to the ground. Except this time, just before the crashing of rock, Korra heard Opal's terrified scream.

            It was the Avatar State or bust.


	34. Crush

            "We're lost."

            "We're not lost."

            Bolin forced himself to count the seconds in his breathing. If he didn't, he knew he'd rage.

            "We're totally lost."

            "We are _not_ lost."

            He had gotten tired of repeating the same conversation with Asami every five or ten minutes, but she seemed relentless in her accusation.

            "We have no idea where we're going. That means we're lost."

            "Have you always been this annoying or did the brain damage just make me more sensitive to it?"

            "Have you always been this big of a jerk?"

            Touché, Bolin thought, but outwardly he sighed. "We have no idea where we're _supposed_ to be going, therefore we can't be lost."

            The two of them had fallen into stride beside each other more as a matter of necessity than a matter of camaraderie. Asami was the one with the flashlight, and Bolin needed her to be able to see. Bolin was the one who could navigate, and Asami needed him to steer.

            They had been walking long enough that Bolin's feet had started to hurt, weaving aimlessly through tunnel after tunnel in the network below Fire Fountain City. It was dark and cold and damp and generally unpleasant, but it was also a weirdly comfortable change from the surface. They hadn't been assaulted. They hadn't been spotted. They hadn't needed to run. In fact, they had sighted firelight only once, and in that case Bolin had promptly knocked a hole into the wall to hide, and whoever had produced the light passed straight on by without incident.

            The only problem was the bickering. They'd started in on each other in hushed, angry whispers almost immediately after descending into the tunnels, and Bolin knew that the bad mood had been entirely his fault. Asami had been prying at him, trying to get him to talk about things he didn't want to talk about to better pass the time and ease both of their nerves, but he'd shut her down hard. It wasn't surprising that Asami would be a little bitter. He'd been pretty rude about it.

            While his side had stopped throbbing--likely because he'd stopped straining himself so much--the pain in his shoulder persisted. The shattered brace-plate still dug into the flesh of his deltoid, or the place where the muscle used to be, and the once precise stabbing sensation had subsided into a weird general burning that radiated halfway to his elbow.

            For a while, he'd wanted to stop to assess the damage and remove the plating, but he didn't. He couldn't muster the nerve to do it. Removing the plates would require him to take off the brace entirely, and taking off the brace would require him to take off his shirt.

            Bolin wasn't about to let Asami see the state of his body. Even if he hadn't been able to keep his mental breakdown to himself, he'd managed to keep his physical deterioration a secret from her. Anything Asami might've suspected about him was nothing more than hearsay from Korra and maybe Opal. Well, definitely Opal. Opal had absolutely seen him without the deceptive cover of clothing, and as much as he loved her, Opal was bad at keeping her mouth shut. At any rate, to allow Asami to see the gigantic bruise Opal had granted him coupled with what he believed to be his disgusting, scrawny _everything else_ would do little more than embarrass him and give her more ammunition for the nagging.

            "Bolin, we're lost."

            "We're _not_ lost."

            "Then where are we going?"

            "Straight."

            "You're horrible, you know that?"

            "You're the one that keeps accusing me of getting us lost."

            "You're telling me where to go!"

            "You're the one that brought us down here!"

            Asami threw up her hands in disgust and the light from her flashlight jumped to the ceiling.

            "Wait a minute," Bolin ordered, and he threw his arm out wide to stop Asami in her tracks. He'd done it so suddenly that she walked straight into his hand with a fleshy bump.

            "And now you're groping me," she said dryly.

            Bolin didn't say anything. Instead, he squinted into the dark for a few fruitless seconds. "Kill the light."

            With a click, the tunnel plummeted back into darkness. It took a few moments for his eyes to adjust, but now that the pitch black had returned he was certain of it: Down the corridor some distance away, a red light flickered off the stone.

            "You see it?" he asked quietly. "Down there?" He pointed, but he knew that Asami probably couldn't see the gesture.

            In the silence, Bolin was sure that Asami had nodded. He said, "Keep the light off," and picked his way forward with as quiet of footsteps as he could.

            It took less than ten steps for Asami to wrap her arms around his elbow, and he didn't stop her. If he was honest with himself, he was just as afraid of this whole situation as she was, if not more so. Even if Asami was terrified enough to be pressing herself against him, she hadn't frozen when the danger had come on them. Had it not been for her quick thinking, Bolin knew he'd have been dead at the first combustion bolt.

            The closer they crept to the light, the more Bolin recognized the truth of the matter: Whatever source was casting it wasn't moving. The flickering remained constant and stationary.

            Bolin poked his head around the corner from which the light was shining, and Asami leaned against him to look, too. The corridor extended another twenty yards or so before opening into what looked like a large room, and that large room was the place from which the firelight was coming.

            "What do we do?" Asami whispered. She was leaning on him so heavily that it hurt. He could feel her breath on his aching shoulder.

            "We go down there and take a look," Bolin replied, just as quietly. "Could be we find something useful. Could be we find someone I can rough up to get some info."

            "You're not roughing anyone up."

            "Why not?"

            "Because what are you going to do with them when you're done? Let them go? Even if you knock them out they're going to wake up eventually and run for help, then we'll be in more trouble than we are right now. If there's someone down here with us I guarantee they know their way around better than we do."

            Bolin didn't respond because he didn't know how. On the one hand he wanted to play the optimist and say that he and Asami could work together to subdue whoever was holding the light and force them to lead the way through the tunnels. On the other, Bolin knew he was nowhere near strong enough to subdue anything, even if Asami helped. He probably couldn't punch hard enough to stun anyone, let alone knocking them out, and his hands had been shaking so hard that he wasn't sure he'd be able to earthbend precisely enough to land a potent hit. All that went without considering the weakness of his dominant shoulder. At the very best, he'd be able to draw some earth from the ground to trap someone, but the idea of leaving them behind where they might never be discovered had goosebumps springing up his arms.

            He was here to rescue Mako, not to trap people and leave them to die.

            When they approached the end of the corridor, Bolin crouched low, an action which hurt his side more than he was anticipating, and continued forward with tentative steps. He planted his left hand flat on the floor, and dragged his right along the wall beside him. He couldn't feel anything through the earth except for Asami.

            He stopped near the doorway to listen more carefully. When Asami placed her hand on his back to gain his attention, he shook his head. Inch by inch he progressed toward the room until he'd managed to gain a position from which he could see the whole area: There was nobody there. In fact, there was nothing there at all, only a single lit torch held in a hole in the wall which, if Bolin was to judge, seemed to have been earthbent there.

            "Great," he grumbled. He wasn't sure if it was sarcasm or not. He'd wanted to find someone, a little bit, but he was also relieved that he hadn't.

            The light was a refreshing change for Bolin and Asami both. As soon as they entered the room properly, Bolin felt Asami's nerves calm a bit, and in turn, his calmed a bit, too.

            "Hey, are you okay?" asked Asami almost immediately. "You don't look very good."

            "You're not doing me any kindness with your looks either," Bolin snapped back. The very last thing he wanted to do was discuss himself with her. He turned back the way they came and raised a block of earth in the doorway.

            "What are you doing?"

            "Don't want to be followed, do we?" Bolin replied. He turned back around to evaluate the room: There were two exits, one directly across the room and the other to the left, but he couldn't tell where they went.

            "Seriously," Asami pressed suddenly, and she grabbed him by the shoulder to turn him around before he could set off.

            Something in the way she'd grabbed him caused the pain to sear again, and though Bolin tried to stifle the wince as he turned, it was no use. The look Asami wore told him very clearly that she'd seen it.

            "Okay, that's it," she said in a scary, commanding voice, "what's been going on with you?"

            "It's not your business."

            "If you don't tell me how you hurt yourself this time I'm going to shock you and find out myself." Asami held up the hand clad in her Equalist glove threateningly. "And if you think I'm kidding, you can try me. Nothing would make me happier after all of this than electrocuting you."

            "You wouldn't dare. If you shock me, who'll lead you out of here?"

            "I'm not so sure it would matter. You're doing as much leading as a badger mole with vertigo."

            "Oh good. Now you're a comedian."

            Asami yanked him toward her. Bolin nearly fell.

            "What's with you people and pulling on me?" Bolin cried in anguish. "You keep jerking me around and then you wonder why I get hurt and then get all mad when I won't... Hey!"

            During his rant, Asami had started messing with the frog fasteners on his shirt. When he tried to pull away, she held him with a strength he hadn't known her to possess.

            Or maybe he'd just gotten that weak.

            "So you hurt your shoulder," she said, "that much is obvious. I figured with the brace on you wouldn't have any..." She stopped when she opened the breast of his shirt, and Bolin looked away, a little embarrassed.

            "You happy now?"

            "It's broken."

            "Really? I hadn't noticed."

            Asami tugged at the brace’s fabric to re-seat it, but that only made the thing hurt worse. Bolin wrenched instinctively away from her and she didn't try to grab him again. Instead, she just watched him, and he watched her, and neither said anything for a tense moment.

            "How'd it happen?" Asami asked.

            "When we got on the roof," Bolin replied shortly. "I landed on it wrong and then you landed on top of me and it snapped."

            "Well, let's get it off you and get those plates out. That ought to help a little." Asami came at him again, more slowly this time, and extended her hands gently. The angry look had gone off her face, and all the frustration seemed to have left her.

            Bolin still didn't want her to see. "No," he said. He took a step backward. "I don't want to."

            "What? Don't be ridiculous."

            "I'm not being ridiculous."

            "Then let me help you!"

            "No!"

            Once again, Asami brandished the glove. This time, she activated it and a spark of electricity arced from her pinky to her thumb. She didn't say anything, but the look she leveled on him told him exactly what she was thinking.

            "Fine," Bolin said. "You can help on two conditions."

            "What conditions?" Asami replied. She lowered the glove.

            "I'm going to seal off this room first, and then you've got to promise not to freak out."

            Asami's face screwed up in momentary confusion, but then the look faded and she nodded her agreement. "I'm not sure what I'd freak out about."

            "Oh, you just wait."

            Asami fell silent, the confused expression back again, and Bolin made his way around the room's perimeter, pulling tall slabs of earth up in front of the two remaining exits. When he'd finished, he stood still for a few seconds. He'd wanted to do everything he could to postpone this, but unless he wanted to be shocked half to death he had no choice. So, with a gigantic sigh, he turned back around and met Asami's eyes.

            "Now, you promised," he said firmly. "Don't forget that."

            "I know. I promised."

            It took too much effort for Bolin to pull his shirt over his head, and he imagined Asami's changing expression as he did. When he'd finally managed it he heard her gasp, and when he shot a sheepish glance back up at her, she looked exactly how he'd imagined she might: Mortified.

            "You promised," Bolin reminded her. Her gaping was setting him on edge. "You promised me you wouldn't freak out."

            "I didn't know what I was agreeing to!" Asami cried. "What did you do? How are you even on your feet right now? How have you been walking around?"

            "I'm stubborn." He hoped the deadpan tone of his voice would set Asami at ease, but it didn't.

            Asami rushed forward, dropping her glove to the floor and looking very much like Su looked when she was worried beyond reason. Wordlessly, she began unfastening the shoulder brace as tenderly as she could. Then she started mumbling. "I can't believe you wouldn't say something. I can't believe you'd just run around like this. It's not a wonder you hurt so bad with this stupid brace pulling on that thing..." She slid the sleeve off his arm and drew a long, heavy breath. "You're messed up."

            "Yeah. We've established that."

            "How long... How long has it been there?" Asami kept looking between his face and his chest, and even with Asami's troubled expression, Bolin felt himself getting hot with embarrassment. "It looks old."

            "It is old."

            "How old?" Asami poked at it, and Bolin jerked away again. "And I ask again: What happened?"

            "Opal happened. And you know exactly _when_ it happened, too, so don't play stupid about it."

            "Opal did this?"

            "You heard me."

            "That was _days_ ago!"

            "Yeah. I'm aware."

            Asami blew a frustrated sigh and turned her attention away from the massive bruise to peer at his shoulder more closely. Now the brace was gone it was easy to see the damage: Not much outside of an angry red mark where the plates had been digging in. Truth be told, it felt a thousand times better now that the pressure was off.

            "You're lucky you didn't knock it out again," Asami said. "This could've been a lot worse."

            "Can I put my clothes back on now? We've got to get moving."

            He took Asami's quiet as a yes, but when he retrieved his shirt from the ground she stopped him again. "You don't want to put this back on without the plates?" She brandished the now very flimsy garment at him.

            "Don't think it's going to do a lot of good. And you said it yourself, having it on just makes the rest hurt worse."

            He pulled his shirt back on, fastened the breast flap, and went back to surveying the room. He didn't want to linger on the issue of his injuries any longer than he had to, so he crossed the room and pulled back the slab of earth covering that exit.

            "You know, she could've broken something," Asami said warningly. She sounded like an old woman. She sounded like Su. "It would explain why you bruised so bad. Did you have it looked at?"

            "No," Bolin replied curtly. "I didn't have anyone look at it. You and Korra are the only two people that know it's there or that it even happened and I'd _really_ like to keep it that way. You understand?"

            “Yeah.”

            Asami had sounded defeated and sad, but she didn’t say anything else about the matter as Bolin started off down the new corridor. If he was to judge by the tone of her voice, she wouldn’t be picking any more fights with him today, and he was glad for that. The quiet might give him some time to think. It might give him the opportunity to push the constantly bubbling panic back down.

            As they walked, the flickering firelight faded until they were left in the pitch darkness again, and the same way they had done earlier, Asami pulled out her flashlight and fell into step beside him. When he glanced over at her, she looked upset. Her face had gone as solid as steel and she kept her eyes locked on some point in the distance. She fidgeted with her glove. He wasn’t even sure she was looking where she was going.

            “What’s the problem?” Bolin asked as he walked. As a matter of course, he lowered his voice to the same quiet whisper he’d been using most of the day. “Why do you look so mad?”

            “Because I’m kind of tired of caring so much about your well-being, then having you blow it off when I tell you that I'm worried. If I didn't know you better than that, I'd say you don't think what you're doing to yourself is a big deal. But it _is_ a big deal, and it's disgusting."

            Asami hadn’t lowered her voice, and the anger came through clearly. Once she’d finished her statement, she set her jaw firm and gave no indication she wanted to talk further. Bolin bit back a sarcastic retort and settled on continuing to walk in the quiet.

            They walked until the darkness felt oppressive again, until Bolin felt tired and his mind began to wander. He thought for a while about where they might be going, about what direction they might be heading and whether it would take them to the surface or somewhere else. Then he thought about Mako and how it was entirely possible that they wouldn't find him. They might've come in here and suffered through all this madness just to walk out empty handed. He wondered at what point they would call it quits.

            When his mind abandoned that matter, he wondered absently about Korra and Opal and whether they were doing okay. He wondered if they were even still alive. He'd panicked so hard during the initial attack that he hadn't thought about looking back to make sure they had escaped. The idea of the two of them laying charred in an alley so far away from home made his stomach lurch, which was stranger still because there was nothing in it and there hadn't been anything in it for innumerable hours.

            He wondered how long they'd been walking. He wondered how long he'd be able to keep walking.

            There was a period of time that Bolin contemplated apologizing to Asami as a preemptive measure. He knew it would be traumatic if he collapsed on her, particularly if it was his last collapse. No matter how much Asami might have disliked him or even hated him, Bolin knew that she would never entertain the thought of leaving him behind. Still, he decided against it. He'd already told her that he wasn't going to apologize to her--granted, he'd been talking about a completely different situation when he'd said that--and besides, for him to come out of the blue with a spontaneous "I'm sorry," would certainly elicit more questions.

            He sighed.

            Then he stopped. Once again he threw his hand out wide, and once again Asami bumped into it breast first.

            "Would you quit that?" she hissed.

            "Stop," Bolin snapped. "Just stop. And shut up."

            He thought he'd felt something.

            "What's the problem?" Asami asked.

            "Shut up, I can't feel anything with you talking."

            Bolin didn't stop to recognize how ridiculous the statement had sounded. There'd been something new, some shift from above, but it had happened in an instant and then gone again. Last time, when he'd noticed the vibrations they were subtle and constant. This was one and done, and it had been huge.

            It didn't fit the pattern.

            Urgently, Bolin leaned against the wall and pulled off his shoes, chucking them to the ground. Then, he planted his feet on the ground and his hands on the wall, and he concentrated.

            He didn't have to concentrate long. Some kind of pulse radiated through the earth, a pulse strong enough to dislodge some of the loose stone in the ceiling and send dust and pebbles raining down on them.

            As suddenly as it had begun, the cave-in stopped and the stones settled. Bolin felt Asami shivering, but before he could think to say anything to calm her a noise echoed through the dark that made his heart skip a beat and froze his blood in his veins.

            It was a scream. It was Opal.

            All at once, Bolin stood straight. He looked left. He looked right. He tried to feel her. He strained. Then he bolted.

            "Bolin!" Asami shouted. "Your shoes!"

            He didn't stop. He didn't care that he was barefoot. He didn't care that he was rushing into a pitch-dark tunnel and leaving his only source of light behind. All he cared about was that he'd heard Opal's desperate shriek, and he was certain that it was coming from the end of the corridor.

            Behind him, Asami flicked on her flashlight. It didn't help. All it did was cast his shadow long on the floor in front of him and blind him to whatever lay ahead.

            "Bolin! Wait!"

            He didn't wait.

            He could feel her.

            As he ran the blasts of vibration continued and the earth rained down: Bolin knew that something awful must be happening somewhere above them. But eventually the corridor came to a fork. He stopped and planted his hands on the wall again. If he could feel her, he could find her.

            "What's going on?" Asami was full-on panting. "What's happening?"

            "Opal."

            "What?"

            "Shut up!"

            He closed his eyes and listened to the earth. Then he darted to the right with Asami on his heels. This time he wasn't afforded the same degree of quiet. The farther down the tunnel he ran the more he could hear--exploding and crashing and earth rumbling--and behind him, Asami had started to shout. She'd started calling Opal's name.

            Then he saw her, and he stopped dead in his tracks.

            For a breathless moment Opal was a silhouette against the dark, but as she drew closer he began to see her. He saw the terror on her face as she ran, and when she raised her eyes he watched her expression change from abject horror to surprise to hopeful to relief, to horror again, and she rushed toward them with new speed.

            "Go!" Opal cried. "Go!"

 

*****

 

            Korra didn't like to use the Avatar State. She never had liked it. There always seemed to be too much risk for too little reward, and half the time the raw power drove her to mindlessness. The Avatar State meant instinct, and sometimes her instinct was wrong.

            This was no exception. She didn't like the idea, but faced with more than a dozen angry firebenders, she had no choice. She had to use the Avatar State or it would mean certain death. But this situation was particularly frightening. Even with the extra power that Raava afforded her she could very well die, and that would be the end of the Avatar Cycle.

            It was mostly fear that drove her immediate action, fear that Opal had been crushed or burned and fear that the two of them might never get out of this horrible, horrible place. She used that fear to power through the transition, to invoke the Avatar State and set to work on the offensive.

            The first thing to do was provide herself cover: Earthbending. She stomped with all her might, sending a wave of raised earth in an arc before her, and when it reached the front lines of the enemy, they jumped. She'd anticipated the move, and as their feet left the floor she pulled mightily up, driving the stone from the ground in a great wall that sent the airborne firebenders flying. Caught off guard, most of them landed awkwardly, and they lay on the ground, subdued.

            With the wall up, Korra entertained the rest using every tool available to her except for firebending. Firebending would be no use to her here, and even through the haze of the Avatar State she knew it. Whatever fire she threw at these people would be deflected or thrown back at her, and there could be no giving these people the upper hand.

            Between earthbending and airbending, she set them on the defensive. With well-timed blasts of air she managed to divert the combustion bolts that rocketed at her, and with her earthbending she managed to subdue the rest. She sent four more flying with a pillar of stone at the same time she turned aside an explosive shot, which went off promptly in the middle of a second group of firebenders. Most of them hadn't seen it coming. Most of them dropped like bumbleflies.

            With the ranks thinned, Korra began focusing her attention on getting out of the building. With a glance up, she threw her arms skyward and grasped at the stone of the ceiling. She ripped it easily down the middle and propelled herself up with her airbending.

            Safely on the roof, she dropped from the Avatar State and ran.

 

*****

 

            All Bolin wanted was to stop running and fall over. His mind had gone to static and every other part of him screamed for rest. His ears rang and his chest heaved and his calves and thighs felt like jelly. It felt as though his still-bare feet were on fire. Over the sounds of his own exertion, Bolin couldn't hear Opal and Asami and he couldn't hear the sounds of the fire bolts and explosions he knew were on his heels.

            Opal had been followed. That was all the information he'd been able to glean in the time it took her to appear and rush past, and it hadn't been because she said something. The only reason he knew something was wrong was because she started screaming at them to run and by the time he'd registered what she'd said, the firebending started.

            He didn't freeze. Fight or flight kicked in and he ran behind Opal and Asami back the way they had come, and when they reached the fork in the tunnel they dove to the right, down the way they hadn't yet traversed and into the dark. Asami couldn't keep the light steady in her haste. Bolin wondered if she was too scared to focus.

            For a while he contemplated turning around to earthbend at their pursuers, but every time the explosions burst behind him and he felt their heat on his back, the thoughts went straight out of his head and the panic came back. There was no way he'd be able to earthbend in this predicament. It took every ounce of his concentration to keep his legs going.

            Opal turned occasionally to fire blasts of air back down the way, and it worked to great and terrible effect: Each time, she knocked a few of the firebenders to the ground or deflected a bolt of combustion, but she also fell farther behind. She'd started the mad dash beside Asami and by now she'd fallen into stride beside Bolin.

            The tunnel snaked downward, and when Opal stumbled on an uneven patch of ground Bolin's instinct kicked in. He grabbed her rough by the upper arm and dragged her along behind until she gained her feet, and then he let go again. She looked at him, confused and afraid, but he didn't look back. He didn't acknowledge her at all.

            When the corridor leveled back out, desperation set in. There wouldn't be much more running. There couldn't be. Bolin knew his limits and he'd gone past them a while ago. If he kept on, he'd stumble the same way Opal had, and she wouldn't be able to drag him.

            Without warning he stopped, he turned, and he unloaded.

            With all the energy he could muster, Bolin tore two sizeable chunks of earth from the wall and hurled them down the way. One hit the mark, toppling three with one shot, and the other intercepted a bolt of combustion that set it to dust. The assault hadn't been terribly effective at thinning the ranks, but it had slowed them down.

            Opal shrieked his name, terrified, and Bolin felt her stop. Then he felt Asami stop. They were shouting at him, but he could scarcely hear anything over the drumming heartbeat that had taken residence in his ears. He had to try. He had to keep them safe, even if it meant that he wouldn't leave with them.

            From low, Bolin pulled a shield of earth from the ground, halting an arc of lightning he hadn't known was coming, and he threw his arms wide. Then he closed his eyes and he hoped. He'd trained in Zaofu. He'd been able to call on the earth at a second's notice. He'd managed to throw the molten rock yards at a time. But he'd been so much stronger then. He'd eaten and he'd slept and he hadn't run a thousand miles. Now it was different. Now the only power he had was drawn from blind panic, and Bolin didn't know how far the panic could push him.

            "Bolin! We have to go!" Asami cried.

            From behind his stone barrier Bolin thrust his palms to the wall and pushed mightily forward, straining to pull the unyielding rock free from itself. He tightened his fists, willed what little energy he had left through his back and shoulders and into the moving stone, and heaved. The rock gave way, came free with the smooth flow of lava, and Bolin threw it two-handed into the onslaught. He didn't look to see where it landed. He didn't open his eyes at all. Instead, in the same motion, he threw his barrier forward, cast his hands down, and split the earth. Then he planted his feet once more and pried it apart, opening a pit of lava from wall to wall that was wide enough that there was no hope for the firebenders to jump it.

            Then he turned tail and ran, clutching at his shoulder and wishing he'd kept the brace.

            When he looked up, Bolin noted Asami and Opal's dumbfounded staring, but he couldn't tell if they were looking at him or past him. It didn't matter. It wouldn't take long for the firebenders to overcome the barrier he'd created.

            "Go!" Bolin roared.

            They went.

            Even with the immediate danger lessened, the three didn't slow their pace. They ran and weaved and ran some more, and as the tunnel drove deeper into the ground its character changed, became rougher, and fewer offshoots opened in the walls. And then there was the smell that came on so fast that it stopped Asami in her tracks.

            Bolin grabbed her and pushed her forward by the shoulder. Smell or not, they had to keep going. They had to find a way out.

            "What is that?" Opal cried from ahead, her hand over her nose. She cast her eyes about, but there was nothing in the tunnel to be seen, particularly not in the dim halo of Asami's flashlight.

            Nobody answered her. Instead, Asami glanced at Bolin and then turned her attention forward again. "Can't you dig up?" she asked breathlessly. "Can't you just dig us out?"

            Bolin shook his head. It was a bad plan for innumerable reasons. He couldn't see what he would be digging into. He could tunnel into a pack of firebenders. He could tunnel into another apartment. He could open the ground beneath any number of structures that would crumble atop them. He might collapse the very tunnel he created, and the thought of so much rock falling over him set a fresh, cold shock of panic through him.

            Worse, the lavabending had wiped him out. The panic had allowed him to stall the attack, but beyond that there wasn't much. Ripping the earth with such power and speed had hurt, and his shoulder emitted its painful, tingling stab again. His side was burning, but he didn't know if it was because he'd hurt it in his straining or if it was because he'd been breathing so hard for so long. Maybe it was a combination.

            "Can't you?" Asami insisted.

            "No."

            When Opal pulled up short, too, Bolin knew there was a problem, but he dared not ask her what it was. Juvenile or not, he didn't want to talk to her. He didn't want to engage her, and he meant not to.

            It took only a few strides for Bolin and Asami to reach Opal's side, and the sight rooted them to the spot, too. When Asami made to raise the flashlight, Bolin grabbed her wrist and held it low, staring. Suddenly the smell made sense.

            There were bodies. Plural. Multiple. They lay strewn about in the hallway in positions that suggested they'd been trying to run the same as Bolin and the girls had been running.

            Speechless and stunned, Bolin picked his way forward past Opal to gain a closer look, and then he began stepping gingerly around the dead.

            "What happened here?" Asami asked in a hushed, horrible whisper. She sounded stupefied. "Who are these people?"

            Bolin shook his head, and without looking back he motioned for the girls to follow with a wave of his hand. From where he stood, he could see clearly that the corridor opened into another circular room the same as it had before, and the room boasted the same three-exit layout as the last. The only difference was that this room was dark, and this room wasn't empty.

            The bodies lay thick on the floor, cluttered in clumps that must once have stood as units of resistance. A literal pile was stacked against the rightmost exit as though they'd been caught in stampede. They lay so thick that Bolin had to tiptoe between twisted limbs and bloated torsos. He could feel fluid on the soles of his feet. It squished between his toes like mud. All the while he worked to keep his eyes up, his tongue pressed to the roof of his mouth. He didn't want to see them. He didn't want to breathe. The smell was enough to make him sick, never mind the feeling of them.

            He hadn’t been ready for this. He hadn’t been ready for any of this.

            "They were burned."

            Bolin turned. With her shirt pulled over her nose, Asami had knelt to examine the carnage. He didn't know what to say. He wanted to collapse but he wouldn't let himself. Even if he meant to die here, he didn't want to do it among such a wreck.

            "It's a mass grave," Asami said. She stood and looked between Opal and Bolin. "It has to be."

            "No, it's not," Bolin replied sickly. "This was an execution." He looked to the dead man at his feet and clenched his jaw. He could feel the vibrations again, the rumble of dozens of feet making their way closer, and Bolin hoped that their pursuers might divert down one of the alternate paths that he, Opal, and Asami had passed up. He sighed, then spoke with some urgency. "Let's go. We don't have time to stay."

            He walked.

            Opal and Asami followed, and together the three passed into another dark, narrow corridor.

            And then an arc of lightning struck the wall two feet to Bolin's left, close enough to set his ears to ringing and far enough above his head to send a shower of debris hailing down. Suddenly the smell wasn't the worst thing on Bolin's mind. The smell only made the swell of panic worse, because now Bolin knew that these maniacs weren't out to capture: They were out to kill.

            He wasn’t ready for this.

            Bolin didn't have to order the girls to run. He bolted forward and they followed close on his heels, but they didn't get far before trouble struck. After fifteen or twenty long sprinting strides down the level corridor, he heard a cry from behind and a heavy thud, and he felt a body hit the ground.

            Opal.

            He skidded to a halt and stumbled such that he had to put one hand down to stabilize, and Asami rushed past, apparently too terrified to register that he'd stopped or that Opal had fallen. Bolin pivoted, and his mind blanked at once.

            Opal was on the ground. She must've slipped. She'd fallen and lay stunned on her front, exhausted. He could see her back heaving with labored breaths. And beyond her, far too close for comfort, the firebenders rushed forward.

            It was small comfort that the firebenders seemed to be too far out of range to be blasting them with fire.

            But they wouldn't be for long.

            Bolin would never know if it was panic or rage or desperation that drove his action, but something rose up inside of him, some primal instinct that made his limbs light and his vision sharp. The burning of his shoulder seemed to stop and the ache in his chest disappeared entirely, but he couldn't register the absence of pain. Something had changed in him, and it had changed without his knowing. He felt as he had before, six months ago, a year ago, long before the collapse had ruined his mind and crippled his strength.

            This time Asami screamed his name, and she screamed Opal's name, too, but Bolin didn't recognize the words. His view had narrowed and his periphery seemed to go to black so that Opal was the only thing he saw. She'd pushed herself up. She'd looked behind to see the firebenders approaching, and they had begun to bend.

            Reckless, Bolin rushed toward her, unaware of himself and yet completely in tune. Blasts of fire rocketed past him as he ran, but he didn’t care. He had to save her. Even if he hated her, he had to save her. Even if it hurt her, he had to save her. Better in pain than dead. Better she lived and he died.

            Everything happened at once.

            With a powerful plant of his right foot, Bolin heaved himself into the air in a long leap forward, and when he landed left-foot first he drove the momentum into the ground, angled and so forceful that it hurt from his ankle to his shoulder and knocked the breath from his lungs. The earth responded in kind, and a pillar of rock shot up beneath Opal that hurled her back toward him with such incredible speed that when she landed she skidded ten feet past.

            The inertia cast him into a roll, and as he came upright he pounded his fists into the ground, rocketing a shockwave of earth down the corridor that knocked the firebenders summarily off their feet. Then, thoughtless in his desperation, he reached low, grasped the earth, and heaved.

            He'd not known his legs to have such power. He'd not known his arms to be capable of hefting so much weight. With everything he had, Bolin pulled the stone from the floor, bearing all the weight through his thighs and into the ground, and he curled his arms upward, drove his palms toward the ceiling. The earth resisted. The earth seemed too heavy to move, but he persisted. He had to save Opal. He had to save Asami. He had to stop the firebenders before they all were killed. He had to save Mako and he had to find Korra, and only after all of that had been accomplished would he consider dying.

            The fear and rush of adrenaline brought energy. Bolin pushed harder through his hips and his legs and his back until suddenly the earth gave way with a deafening snap, and it ripped with a rocky crash from the ground.

            Beyond Opal's mortified screaming and his own roar of exertion, he heard a sound. It was a crunch. There had definitely been a crunch. But there had been a squish, too. And there had been a splattering. Something wet hit his face and his arms, and a set of vague, masculine screams cut short. And there had been a pop.

            The bolt struck too quickly for Bolin to react. Defenseless, the subsequent explosion blew him from his feet and sent him sprawling. He smacked into the ground shoulder first and skidded hard down the hall, the rough stone scraping into his flesh. And when he stopped, he lay there unmoving and exhausted, his eyes closed and his forehead pressed into the cold, damp floor.

            The silence fell so completely that Bolin wondered if the explosion had rendered him deaf. It fell so completely that he wondered if he had indeed died. But he could still smell the fermenting corpses, and he could smell blood, and the scent of undeniable death hung heavy all around. It overwhelmed everything else and set his head to spinning.

            Slowly, Bolin's senses returned. He heard his own frantic, tremulous breathing. He felt the heat of his own exhalation around his face. He felt the cold of the stone and the sear of an entirely new pain up and down his arm and deep in his ribs and everywhere there existed a nerve capable of registering agony.

            Then there was something like a squeak, the sound of a terror so huge that it couldn't come out. It hadn't been Asami because Asami had begun calling his name in a shaking voice that he'd never heard out of her before. He couldn't feel her. His feet were numb. He didn't know where she was at. He didn't know where _he_ was at. He didn't know how far he'd flown or how far he'd skidded across the floor. It felt like all the skin had been ripped from his arm and his bare calf and his foot where he'd slid. And he was certain that the wetness he felt all up and down his side was blood.

            He heard the clatter of Asami's metal flashlight on the floor, and she threw herself down beside him and wrapped her hands around him. The contact hurt so fiercely that some weird sound came out of him and she dropped him in shock.

            "What did you do? What did you do?" Opal was squeaking. Her voice had gone so high pitched and quiet that he could barely hear her.

            Very, very slowly, Bolin got his hands beneath his chest and pushed. His arms trembled beneath his weight, but he managed to lift himself far enough to peer back down the way and see what damage he'd caused to make the whole place go silent.

            He'd meant to raise the floor.

            He'd meant to stop them.

            He'd meant to create a dead end.

            The wave of earth he'd used to knock the firebenders down had obviously caught them off guard. And the hunk of rock he'd brought up from the floor had caught them off guard, too. The hunk of rock he'd brought up from the floor had raised them to the ceiling, and then it had crushed them. As if to prove the point a thick stain of red trickled down the side of the stone, shining wet in the dim light, and a single, twisted arm poked out from the space between the rock and the ceiling. The longer Bolin stared at it the more he registered the details: The arm had swollen and discolored, the fingers fattened unnaturally like an overfilled sausage where the flesh had been pushed outward. He suddenly understood that it wasn't just blood running down the side of the rock. It was everything that had once been inside of those people that the rock had squashed out of them. It was why the stone had been so difficult to lift.

            He turned his face to the floor and held his breath to keep himself from heaving. Acid rose in his throat.

            Opal had started to cry.

            Asami shifted and placed her hands gently on him as though waiting to help. And then she gasped, and when Bolin looked at her she was staring past him at the floor beyond his back with a look of disgust and horror on her face that made the nausea worse.

            Then her eyes rose, and the look of disgust and horror snapped to a look of shock and surprise.

            "Bo," she whispered. And then, her hand shaking, she pointed. Then, her voice stronger, she called to Opal.

            Then Opal was beside them, and her eyes and her face went through the exact same series of changes that Asami's had done. With her eyes on the floor, she went a sickly shade of green. And when her eyes raised to follow Asami's dumbfounded finger pointing, she gasped and clapped her hands back over her nose and mouth. Bolin worried she might throw up on him.

            The panic came back again, it ripped through him with enough strength that he managed to push himself far enough up to look behind, and when his eyes fell on the bloated, weeping corpse beside him he felt remarkably faint. He certainly jumped, and he catapulted himself backward so forcefully that he knocked Asami clean off her feet. He'd nearly landed on the thing, had been inches away from it, and his stomach dropped when he realized that the wetness he'd felt on the floor hadn't been his own blood, but had instead been the fetid discharge from a putrid, almost wholly decomposed body.

            And then he looked up, and his eyes went wide and his whole body numbed again, and strangely enough, the desire to vomit increased.

            Mako was staring at him, a look of complete unknowing on his face.

            Before the collapse, Bolin might have laughed at the complete absurdity of the whole matter, at the fact that he'd just killed how many people, been blown yards down a hallway by an errant blast of combustion, and skidded to a halt in a puddle of human sludge directly in front of the very person he'd been meaning to find.

            In the few seconds the two stared at each other, time seemed to stop. Nothing mattered anymore. He'd done it. He'd succeeded, and everything from here on out was icing on the cake. They had found Mako and now all they had to do was get him out of that cell--an easy measure with earthbending--and get him back to the bison.

            Then find Korra.

            Then he could be done.

            Bolin didn't know what energy drove him to his feet, but it had come so abruptly that Asami recoiled and he drew Opal's attention away from Mako. He didn't care how horrified she looked as she stared.

            Without a second thought, Bolin ripped a hole into the wall. Then he considered his brother, who still sat with the same blank, confused expression on his face while he stared. It was as if Mako didn't recognize them, like he hadn’t realized that they were there yet. Then he looked back at Asami and Opal, and he knew what he had to do.

            "Get him out of there," Bolin ordered at once, a weird, unnatural strength in his voice. "Get him out of there and get back to the bison."

            "How?"

            Bolin's eyes went wide. And then he turned to Mako. "Do you know how to get out of here?" he asked, and when Mako didn't respond, Bolin's voice grew angry and loud. "Can you navigate the tunnels or not?"

            Mako nodded, stupefied.

            "Then get him out," Bolin said again, his attention back on the girls. "You get him out of here right now and wait at the bison. You don't come back for anything, and if things start looking bad, you leave. Do you understand me?"

            Asami looked ready to protest, and Opal was still clutching her hands over her mouth.

            "Do you understand me?" Bolin roared, and when the two girls nodded, he nodded back then looked at the ground. "Be safe," he said, his voice quiet in afterthought, and he looked to Asami and then met Opal's gaze straight on. "Just because I hate you it doesn't mean I want you to die."

            When he'd finished the statement he recognized the eerie calm that had come over him, the emptiness of the void that had eaten the terror. In the absence of panic, the void had opened wider than ever and stole every ounce of feeling away from him, but the void gave him power. It gave him energy enough to rip himself away from Asami and Opal and Mako to begin sprinting down the corridor again.

            "Where are you going?" Opal shrieked.

            He didn't stop running when he shouted back: "Someone's got to help Korra!"


	35. Push

            Bolin ran. He ran without knowing where he was going or what he was doing or how he would figure it out. He ran because he had to get away. He needed to hide.

            A primitive, fearful instinct had come over him in the moments following the crush that demanded he maintain the appearance of control, and when that instinct failed and the forcefully applied mask threatened to fall off, he ran. It was the same way he'd done the day he'd visited the combustion bender when he'd worked so hard to present himself as confident and intimidating only to fail in the end. The panic now was the same panic from then, the panic that drove him from the combustion bender's cell to hide his crumbling exterior from Korra and Asami and Lin. But this time it was worse. It wasn't just Korra and Asami who would see him in such a pathetic state. Now it was Opal. It was Mako. Even together, none of them had the remotest idea of how far he'd fallen.

            He'd managed to hold himself together through all the horror, to force some iteration of command that made him seem on the level. He'd issued them orders to get Mako out. He'd maintained his composure, at least outwardly, but he didn't know how he'd done it because even as he said the words every part of him wanted to buckle and cry.

            He'd killed them.

            He'd crushed them.

            He hadn't been ready.

            The reality of the matter made Bolin panic again, and it weighed so heavily on his mind that he couldn't think and knew it. It was like he’d been before, back when he'd first waked after the collapse and in the subsequent days when he'd been completely out of touch, but this wasn't the same. That had been physical; this was mental. That had been caused by the damage from literal tons of rock that they had used to crush him. This had been caused by the rock that he'd used to crush _them_.

            He needed to sit. He needed to sit or he was going to fall. He could feel the energy dropping out of him fast, like all the neglect coupled with all the exertion had finally caught up with him. He didn't want to pass out in the pitch-black hall. He didn't want to faint. He didn't want Asami or Opal or Mako to find him. He needed to hide, and he needed to do it now.

            Weak and desperate, Bolin rent a sizeable hole in the wall of the tunnel, staggered inside, and closed the earth behind him. Then he fell to his hands and knees and heaved so hard that it hurt, but nothing came out of him except a horrible noise and a painful bout of coughing.

            The stink of blood and rotted flesh clung to every part of him. It hung in the air so thick that he could taste the metallic sweetness of rotting meat when he breathed. He could feel it crawling on his arms and on his legs and between his toes. He could feel it burning on his face, dripping down his forehead with his own salty sweat, and when he tried to wipe it away his palms slid slick over his skin. He couldn't tell the blood from the sweat from the tears from the revolting fluids that had leaked out of the corpses.

            He'd killed them.

            Their insides were on his outsides, and he couldn't get them off.

            He heaved again, and nothing came out.

            Shaking and sweating, Bolin sat against the wall and laid his head back. He stared into the dark, willing the nausea away and struggling to catch his breath. All he wanted was to close his eyes, but every time he blinked he saw the blood on the rock. Every time he blinked he saw the lumpy, disembodied arm and the bloated, purplish body he'd landed next to. When he finally gave in and squinted his eyes shut against the tears and the panic, he saw the collapse. He remembered how he'd been crushed and wondered if the firebenders had felt the same way he had.

            They couldn't have, because he'd lived and they'd died. He'd been lucky. They hadn't. He'd smashed their skulls between two slabs of unyielding stone and the last thing they'd seen had probably been the back of their own head or their guts being squeezed out of their mouths. He wondered how long it had taken them to die, if it had been immediate or if they had suffered. They probably had, at least some of them. There had been a space between the slab and the ceiling: It was wholly possible that some poor person was up there compressed and broken, suffocating among the smashed corpses.

            "You didn't mean to do it," he whispered to himself. He sounded sick, but he had to try to stop the thoughts. "You didn't mean to do it."

            But he _had_ meant to do it. Maybe he'd not intended to kill them, but he'd intended to raise the stone. He'd intended to stop them no matter the cost, but he'd never imagined that the measures he took would end so brutally. And wasn't that all that mattered in the end? That he'd killed them? What did intent matter if the result was the same? What did it matter if the panic was what drove his action?

            Bolin drew a few very deep breaths to push back the sickness in his stomach, then rubbed at his face with the bottom of his shirt for what little good it did. He pressed his palms into his forehead. He'd had his freak out. Now it was time to pull himself together and keep going. It was time to rationalize and move on. It was time to focus. It was time to find Korra.

            "You didn't mean to do it," he said again, more firmly this time. "If you hadn't killed them, they'd have killed you."

            It wasn't true. He could've escaped without fatalities. All he'd had to do was move the slab he'd raised ten feet forward or back, and the clump of blood and flesh presently packed against the corridor ceiling would still be human. All he'd had to do was temper himself and use his head, and everything would've been okay, but the panic had gotten the best of him to catastrophic ends.

            He shook his head to drive the thought away. If ever there was a time to stick to the plan, this was it. If he focused, he could keep going. He could distract himself with the illusion of purpose. Besides, it didn't matter how many psychotic firebenders he took out in the end because he'd be going with them. It had already been decided. An eye for an eye. He'd hold himself responsible.

            There was no use panicking now, he thought. The damage had already been done. He'd already killed them and there was no taking it back. He'd sullied himself and stained his hands and made himself a murderer. In the end, what was the difference between killing one or ten or a hundred? It was all equally horrible. Quantity wouldn't change the truth.

            It was a little freeing, that thought. He'd already done the worst and in the moment he'd done it, it hadn't been so bad. He hadn't known what he was doing. He hadn't thought about it at all. It was only after the fact, only after he'd seen the aftermath and thought about the permanence of what he'd done, that he'd started to panic.

            Either way, the dam was broken and he knew he'd never be the same. He couldn't take it back. He'd never be able to get the sound of crunching bones out of his ears. He'd never forget the smell of the corpses and the blood and the rot. How much worse would it be if he did it again?

            It was weird and frightening how the thought came to him.

            He wouldn't kill if he didn't have to. He didn't _want_ to, but he'd do what he needed to make sure everyone got out alive. He'd be the fall guy. He'd carry the load so that no one else had to, and if that meant killing people, so be it. If he had to put blood on his hands to keep the others' clean, he would. As long as Korra got out safely and the other three made it to the bison, the rest didn't matter.

            With a distinct shake in his legs, Bolin stood and steeled himself to the possibilities. He'd leave his tiny space, tunnel upward blindly, and rush to Korra's rescue wherever she was. It was reckless in every way but it had to be done. He'd do what he had to in order to reach the surface, and once he was there he'd do what he had to in order to make sure Korra was safe. The fear had driven him before, had taken the rationality from him and replaced it with utter, thoughtless barbarism, and it would no doubt drive him again. His insuppressible panic had already given him strength enough to kill without hesitation. Now he hoped it would give him strength enough to move on.

 

*****

 

            Korra was tired. She was tired of running and tired of fighting and tired of looking for the others. Every time she turned around another wave of firebenders had taken up the chase--some of them came after her more than once--and every time they approached, she shut them down.

            The Avatar State carried her through most of the early fighting, gave her the means by which she could dispatch and escape, but it had begun to fail. She was exhausted. She'd _been_ exhausted. All the worrying of the last few days and all the running and bending and fighting she'd done since sundown had sapped her of her strength. She doubted very much that the Avatar State would come to her again, at least not under her control.

            It was funny how that worked, she thought, how there were times that she could invoke Raava's spirit to bolster herself at her own will. That was the Avatar State she preferred. That was the Avatar State with control. Then there was the scary one: the horrible Korra that came out when her life was in danger and the odds too great to overcome. It was the Korra that had come out when she'd been poisoned, the Korra that drove her away from home and stole three years of her life. It was the Korra that had once haunted her dreams.

            She didn't want that Korra to show up again.

            With these thoughts in mind, she worked to fight back carefully, conserving what energy she could for the next attack and retreating at every opportunity to avoid conflict. She hid in dark corners, watching and waiting for her next chance to move in and explore.

            She had to find the others and get out, Mako or no, because the firebenders were beginning to get wise.

            Presently she'd hunkered down in what seemed to be an abandoned shed at the border of one of the large courtyards. She watched out into the night as squads darted around, weaving between buildings and crossing the courtyard at even intervals. The whole place crawled with sentries and lookouts. Korra didn't know how she would get out.

            She needed to get back to where she'd been separated from Opal. She needed to get underground. Bolin said there was a tunnel running beneath them, or at least that he _thought_ there was, and it only made sense that the stone staircase leading into the earth would take her there if only she could find it again. But Korra had been forced to run all over the place. She was turned around and confused and wouldn't be able to get her bearings unless she wanted to put herself back into the line of fire. The only landmark she had to go by was the enormous, headless statue spewing endless fire into the sky, and if Korra had to judge by it alone, she'd made her way to the completely wrong side of the city.

            For a few seconds Korra thought about digging herself down. She could easily earthbend into the ground and she could probably cover her tracks enough that no one would be able to follow her, at least until morning when the evidence became more obvious. But that idea scared her. She wasn't a badger mole. She didn't know what was below her or what she might tunnel into.

            She thought about running back to Oogi, about retreating wholeheartedly and regrouping to try again, but that was an awful idea on multiple counts. If they trailed her back to the bison she'd be forced to lift off, and if the others hadn't made their way back, they'd be stranded. If she lifted off, the firebenders would track her everywhere she went, and there would be no setting back down to try again.

            Korra sighed and slumped down, her mind a tangle of useless ideas. Her best bet was to keep doing as she'd been doing, to make her way between buildings as she could, explore them for paths downward, and hope that she ran into the others.

            It was a stupid idea. It was the kind of idea that Bolin would've come up with before every ounce of humor had been crushed out of him by the building. Had the idea of running aimlessly among a throng of enemy firebenders come out of him, she would've laughed at him. She would've called it absurd.

            She couldn't call it absurd now. It was her only option.

            Korra crept out of the shed and into the night. She held her breath at every corner, kept her head on a swivel, her ears open to the tiniest sensation, and very slowly she made her winding way toward the belching statue.

            It was her only option.

            The trouble started when she entered the second courtyard. She didn't know where the sentry came from, who'd spotted her or when, but a shrill whistle broke through the dark, and before she could cross the open yard to find cover, the firebenders were on her again.

            They came in droves. They came in formation. They came prepared, and Korra wasn't.

            Korra fought with all her might. She dispatched the enemies as they rushed at her, but every time she tried something new it seemed that they adapted. While in the beginning they had come at her four at a time, they now came eight and twelve at a time and Korra knew she wasn't equipped to deal with the numbers. She'd learned direct bending, bending that took one opponent at a time, two or three at best, and relied on powerful targeted attacks to knock the enemy out in a couple of hits. She didn't know how to deal with multiples outside of producing vortexes of air as Opal had done, and those weren't effective against such an inconsistent number.

            As she fought, Korra noticed patterns. For every three firebenders there seemed to be one lightning bender, and the groups stayed near to one another. They worked together, complimenting each other so closely that when one or two were knocked out the whole thing fell apart. All she had to do was identify where the groups began and where they ended, and which combatants were linked to one another. If she took out the lightning benders first those boundaries became more apparent, and she could take care of the rest.

            The combustion benders were a different story. They were rare but potent, and didn't seem to belong to any group in particular. They didn't work with each other or anyone else, instead choosing to keep distant and fire their bolts from safety.

            She'd never learned how to counter combustion bending the way she had firebending and, to a lesser extent, lightning. She knew the basics of redirection but had never tried it herself; she had no idea how to deflect an explosion outside of well-timed air blasts that often served more to push the fire away than it did to alter the course of the shot. The only way she truly knew to _stop_ the combustion was to strike the bender in the head, but there was no way she could get a clean hit. Even if she wasn't occupied fighting against hordes of other firebenders, her hands were shaking too hard to earthbend that way. She wasn't sure she'd be able to do it with steady hands, either. She'd never practiced flicking the rocks. She'd never practiced earthbending with any preciseness at all: She'd never had to. She had firebending for that. She had waterbending for that. Earthbending was for cover. It was for defense.

            If there was any bright side to the fighting, it was that the squads didn't seem to organize between one another before approaching her. They attacked two or three groups at a time, and when she knocked them aside, a few more came on so that rather than one enormous mass, Korra fought constantly against a steady stream.

            She would've rather had the mass, honestly. Then she could wipe it out with the Avatar State in one fell swoop and be done. But given the lack of such an advantage, she'd gladly accept their disorganization.

            The firebenders poured in from all sides, and though Korra put forth her best effort, she couldn't keep up with the flow. As much as she'd hoped to avoid it, there was no choice but the Avatar State.

            The power came at her call, albeit with more resistance than it had the last time, and she began her work. Throwing her arms wide she cast two blasts of compressed air to either side that knocked the encroaching firebenders off their feet and backward. She swept her right hand forward, directing the air toward a combustion bender whose face had screwed up in that telltale expression, and she deflected the explosion high and wide. Then she pulled at the roof on which he'd been standing and he fell right along with it.

            She repeated the actions over and over, earthbending for defense and airbending for offense. As she attacked she worked her way to the perimeter of the courtyard, hoping she'd get there before all her strength gave out.

            As she neared a path that led between two buildings and away from the courtyard, an errant blast of combustion burst at her feet, sending her sprawling. Dazed, she jumped to her feet and threw a block of stone before darting into the alley.

            It took a few moments for her to realize that she'd fallen out of the Avatar State but when it finally dawned on her, she wasn't surprised. She'd known her energy was running low. She understood that she couldn't last forever, Avatar or not.

            She ran. She ran blind and horrified that she'd stumble into another slew of enemies and be utterly unable to handle them.

            And then she did.

            It wasn't a _slew_ , necessarily, but a single guard, and it appeared that he had been just as surprised to have run into her as she was to have run into him, because he simply stood and stared at her for a few seconds, confused. Then his face began to take on the look of someone who realized something very important very suddenly.

            He threw his arms up and punched a fireball straight down the way, and as Korra dodged it, the same signaling whistle she'd heard earlier rang through...

            ...And then cut short, drowned out by another, very different sound that Korra hadn't heard before and couldn't identify. She looked up, prepared to take a ball of fire to the face, but then she pulled up short as well. The sentry wasn't looking at her. He was looking down the way somewhere off to the side between the buildings, and his eyes had gone wide and afraid. In the same second a glowing hot mass of _something_ splattered straight into his shoulder, stuck there, and oozed down his arm like a glob of cold honey.

            In the fraction of a second before the sleeve of his jacket erupted into flames, the sentry looked at Korra, and Korra looked back at him, and his eyes went wider still. Then came the screams, then he dropped to the ground, clutching at the stuff on his arm and trying to pull it away with his free hand. It spread around with the thrashing. It burned everything it touched. Within a few seconds, every part of the guard had been obscured by flame, and Korra couldn't stop watching as he writhed and shriveled and stopped moving.

            She'd never seen someone burn like that. She'd never smelled anything like it. It had happened so fast.

            There was a moment when Korra wondered if some firebender had turned rogue and decided to help her. She wondered if Mako had somehow come to her rescue. It had all happened so fast. She didn't realize the truth of the matter until a flash of green bolted past, grabbed her by the wrist, and dragged her down the way.

            She couldn't have resisted if she'd wanted to, and at first she was terrified. It took her longer than it should have to recognize Bolin for who he was: She hadn't been expecting him to come darting out of the darkness, and even if she had expected him, she'd never have known he was coming at her. He didn't look as himself. He was filthy, covered from head to toe in something that looked like blood and mud and dirt so thick it had caked on his skin and soaked through his clothes. Through the filth, it looked as though the whole of his right arm and shoulder was bleeding, but she couldn't tell in the semidarkness.

            She couldn't see his face.

            "How did you find me?" Korra cried a bit desperately, unsure why that was her first question instead of any number of others: Where was Asami? Had he found Opal? Had they found Mako? Why had they separated? Where was he running to? What the heck had happened to him?

            "Shut up," Bolin replied, breathless. Korra could hear the panic back in his voice again, the quivering shortness of his words. But there was something else in his voice, too, a hardness she'd never heard. There was something beyond anger in it that frightened her enough that she wouldn't have spoken again, even if he'd not just told her to shut up. Still, the hand that clutched her wrist had the slightest tremble to it. His palm was sweaty.

            He pulled her into another courtyard, this one closer to the fire-belching statue, and here they were met with another force of firebenders. They couldn't stop the alarm--there were too many enemies to have stopped it--but Korra felt better all the same. At least she wouldn't be fighting alone this time.

            Bolin dropped her arm and rushed ahead to fight, reckless. Mid-step he planted his right foot and jumped, helped into the air by a small hunk of stone. He coiled as Korra had seen him do a thousand times, and when he landed he jammed his feet into the ground so hard he had to roll out of it.

            Korra watched dumbfounded as an enormous, jagged hunk of rock shot up from beneath the firebenders across the way, rocketing three of them high into the air. As they flew they flailed, and then they fell hard. One went head-first and didn't move again, and the other two landed hard on their backs and shoulders and lay there noiselessly twitching.

            Bolin hadn't stopped. He hadn't even paused to watch. The moment the firebenders had taken their uncontrolled flight, he grasped at the stone he'd drawn from the earth, liquefied it, and hurled it back toward the advancing line. It hadn't looked very fancy, but it served its purpose perhaps a little too well. The swell crashed down atop the firebenders who'd persisted in their attack, and what had seconds before been a squadron of well-trained soldiers devolved into a singular, amorphous blob of orange-red rock.

            The others ran from the lava, screaming, and while some came at them still, a great many of them retreated.

            A sinking feeling hit Korra in the pit of her stomach, and when the blob of lava-covered people stopped moving and slumped to the ground, she gagged and swooned. The lava didn't stop. It kept creeping.

            He'd killed them. And when she gained enough composure to look up, he was killing them again, scooping lava from the ground in long tendrils that he whipped into the crowds like she would have whipped the water, except that when her water splattered after the initial connection it did no damage. The lava did. It hit, it broke into globs of thick molten rock, and flew all around to burn whatever it touched.

            With the ranks thinned again, Bolin rushed back, grabbed her wrist, and yanked her along.

            Korra didn't know what to say. She didn't know that she could speak if she wanted to. The hardness hadn't been restricted to his voice: It had extended to his face, too, and the expression he wore as he'd rushed back to her was made of steel. He didn't say a single word as he ran, either. He'd just grabbed hold of her with his still trembling hand--it was shaking more now than it had done before--and rushed off.

            "Where are we going? What happened to you?"

            "Shut up!"

            She did.

            Bolin took them on a path that led away from the belching statue and toward the easternmost border of the city where they'd entered, and he didn't take nearly as much care as Korra had done. He threw lava at every sentry they came across with such finesse that Korra wondered just how much he'd been practicing, and when their path forward was cut off by a group he opened the ground and pushed the lava toward them. Sometimes it hit them. Sometimes it didn't. They always ran. Sometimes they screamed.

            Had the whole spectacle not been so terrifying, it would have been astounding. The way he swept the stone from the ground seemed to come as naturally to him as sweeping water was for her, except Korra understood how vastly different the two things were. To waterbend meant only moving the water, a simple manipulation of the element that relied more on momentum than it did on technique. Whipping the lava wasn't the same. For him to pull the stone from the ground while simultaneously energizing it enough to liquefy it was testament enough to his skill. For him to manipulate such a thick, slow-flowing liquid the same way as she manipulated water went well beyond.

            Clearly their training had paid off.

            At least, it paid off until the combustion began.

            It struck Korra as very strange when the next courtyard they breached was utterly empty. To this point, those had been the most dangerous places, the places where the enemy firebenders congregated to meet them head-on. She wondered if they had learned their lesson. She wondered if enough of them knew better than to face off with an angry and apparently murderous lavabender, considering how many of their companions had already fallen.

            She was about to attempt questioning Bolin again when she heard the telltale sounds of combustion, but this time there hadn't been only one. This time the sound came as a series, and just as Bolin yanked her out of the line of fire, four explosions burst in a tight formation around the spot they'd just been standing.

            For a few frantic seconds, Korra searched around, and she noted that Bolin was doing the same. She also noted that the look of steely determination on his face had completely fallen away.

            She had to grab him to avoid the next round of combustion.

            "Where are they?" Korra cried. She couldn't spot any of them.

            "There!"

            Bolin wrenched his arm away from Korra and bolted clumsily across the courtyard, close enough to one of the buildings that he could grab the wall nearest him and pull it from its foundation, sending the whole thing crumbling. Then he turned and pulled the next building down in similar fashion.

            Korra didn't know who the combustion benders were aiming at. As many explosions seemed to be for her as they were for Bolin, and she scrambled about to gain ground on him. She managed to close the gap he'd created, but in her focus lost track of the blasts. One struck the ground four feet in front of her, and though she managed to throw an instinctive burst of air out before her to neutralize the fire, the shock of the explosion knocked her from her feet.

            She landed hard on her back, the wind driven from her lungs, and she was certain it was the end. She'd fallen. She'd been stunned. She couldn't will herself to move. Bolin was too busy protecting himself from the combustion to worry about her. Korra closed her eyes and hated herself for being so stupid to come here, and she hated herself for having used all of her energy so early on.

            At the same time she heard three successive pops, she heard Bolin cry her name. She squinted her eyes closed and waited for impact.

            It came, but in no way she expected. She heard the sound of explosions just as she thought she would, but they seemed weirdly distorted. The noise was muffled but distinct, loud enough to make her ears ring but somehow dampened. And rather than feeling the heat of flame wash over her, the heat came gently and coupled with the strangest pressure on her middle.

            Then there was the smell.

            Korra opened her eyes and understood for the first time in her life the meaning of _pitch black_. She couldn't see a thing even if she strained; there was no difference between eyes closed and eyes open, and the whole thing had happened so fast that the seconds afterward seemed an eternity.

            Before her ears stopped their ringing, she understood. She wasn't dead but the danger certainly hadn't gone away. The ringing faded out and slowly but surely the sounds of explosions and fire bolts connecting with stone faded back in. The sound of panicked breathing came with it.

            "Not like this. It can't happen like this."

            Bolin repeated the phrase in a whisper so hoarse and frantic that it made Korra's hair stand on end. It was as though he didn't realize she was awake, or didn't realize that she could hear him, because Korra had seen him panic enough to know that he'd never be quite so vocal about what he was thinking.

            A bit frantic herself, Korra reached out to feel. Perhaps half a foot to either side her hands ran into hard walls of stone that stretched as far down her body as she could reach and further beyond. She didn't know how the stone was standing up to the onslaught. She tried to reach up, to feel how far the walls extended above her head and up into the air, but her hands met resistance.

            The truth settled on her then, and as she groped about in the darkness to verify, a conflicted, deeply odd sensation replaced her worrying.

            Bolin had very clearly landed atop her, though she didn't know when he'd done it or how. She felt his calves and thighs folded tight at her side, his knees pressing into her waist. Over her middle she felt his hips, though for whatever modesty was worth, he'd held himself aloft. He'd had the presence of mind to keep some space between them, and Korra wasn't sure if she should see that as a compliment or not. He'd been desperate enough to straddle her, yes, but he definitely wasn't _laying_ on her.

            At least he wasn't at first. In her panicked groping, Korra managed to forget everything that wasn't imminent danger, but she remembered when her hands pressed against his ribs. A horrible noise came out of him and his left elbow buckled, and she could suddenly no longer say that he wasn't laying on her.

            Her first inclination was to apologize profusely, to lay on the _I'm sorry_ so thick he'd have to swim out of it, but with his forehead pressed hard against her shoulder and every muscle tightened and shaking in what must have been mind-numbing pain, she couldn't bring herself to say anything. Worse, now he was so close to her, she could feel his panicked twitching every time a noise echoed from outside.

            Beyond the noise, she listened as he whispered, "Don't pass out. Don't pass out. Stay awake," over and over and over in a sick, pained way that twisted Korra's stomach.

            "We have to get out of here," Korra said quietly, her hands on his middle. She had to redirect him. She had to help him get his head back together. "What are we going to do?"

            She felt him shake his head against her shoulder.

            "Down," Korra said. "We have to go down."

            "We can't go down," Bolin panted. The words came thick and slow, like he couldn't force them out. The quality of his voice sounded eerily similar to the day they'd played Pai Sho in the hospital, almost like he couldn't think of the words. He'd started to stammer. "I don't know what's down there. We could land in anything."

            It took a great deal of effort for Korra to keep her voice even and calm. She knew it the same way as he did: There was no way to know what was beneath them. She took a breath, hoping that if she maintained her calm it would help him get his own back. "I don't see how we have any other choice."

            "Are… Are you sure?"

            "Go," Korra commanded. " I don't know how long this barrier will last, and if we try to escape up here, we're one hundred percent dead. At least if we go down we have a chance."

            Again she felt Bolin nod against her shoulder. Then he strained to push himself up and shifted his weight from his arms to his hips.  Something in the way he pressed on her set a strange, tingling flutter from Korra's stomach to her toes. Korra felt the power building in his legs, and then all at once he jammed his palms flat into the earth either side of her head, and the ground gave way beneath them. He bore down, his body pressed so close to hers that she could feel his chest expanding against her own with every effortful breath he took.

            After a time he stopped to close the earth above them, and then just as suddenly he slammed his palms down again. Again they dropped, except this time the stone fell out entirely. Horrified and heedless to his injury, Korra wrapped her arms tight around his chest, and they plummeted into the dark. 

 

            Korra woke in a panic among a pile of broken stones. She didn't remember fainting or lying down. She didn't remember when the floor had come up to meet her. Last she recalled the stone had disappeared from beneath them and the darkness had swallowed them whole, and now everything hurt.

            She lay there for a while, calming herself and taking inventory of her body, flexing her feet and her legs, feeling at her face and arms for blood. Outside of a sore ankle and a scrape on her arm there was nothing of note: She'd either been lucky or they hadn't fallen far.

            When she sat up, she recognized the silence.

            "Bolin?" she called in a quiet, quivering voice.

            The lack of response made the silence all the more horrifying. Before they'd gone down, his breathing had been obvious. His touch had been obvious, the weird smell coming off him had been obvious, and now there was nothing but a faint, sweaty odor that could just as easily have been coming off of her as off of him.

            Afraid, she held her palm aloft and produced a tiny, flickering flame that cast the area into a series of eerie dancing shadows that verified that there had indeed been some kind of tunnel beneath the city. It was a room so wide that the light from her pitiful fire didn't reach the opposing wall, rough stone with no distinctive marks or signs at all. It was as though they'd landed in a man-made cavern.

            Her first instinct was to look up. The hole they'd left in the deceptively low ceiling had been small, smaller than she'd have imagined given that two of them had fallen through. If nothing else, it explained the benign injuries: It'd only been a ten or twelve foot drop, and they'd made it through far worse in the past even without the benefit of stone to break their fall.

            She looked around, and at the same time her heart skipped a beat her stomach fell to her ankles. Bolin was there, but he was just lying, half-curled on his right side, and she couldn't hear him breathing anymore. She couldn't hear the sounds of panic coming from him. He didn't even twitch. His face had gone stone still.

            For a few seconds Korra sat there and watched, waiting for him to come around the same as she had, but he didn't, and the longer she watched the bigger the hole in her stomach became. Eventually the worry grew to be too much, and she dropped the flame and crawled until she bumped his arm with her hand. She sat on her feet and shook him.

            She didn't know what use it would be. She couldn't see if he was waking.

            She shook him again, then a third time, and she waited between each for a groan or a sigh or any sound at all, she waited to feel him twitch beneath her hands, but there was nothing. Her only relief came when she put her hand to his face and felt shallow breaths against her palm: At least he wasn't dead.

            Korra produced her fire once again to set about evaluating the damage. It was a slow, laborious task, but if there was a silver lining to every cloud, Korra found it in the quiet. No one had followed them down. Wherever they'd landed seemed to be abandoned. It seemed that she would have the luxury of time.

            Two things became apparent immediately: Something awful had happened before he'd found her, and whatever it was had made him filthy and smelly and shoeless.

            One handed, she grasped his shoulder and rolled him to his back. She'd expected him to make some kind of noise at the touch, but there came nothing. There was nothing even when she shook him again, not even when she lay her hand flat on his chest where she knew the enormous bruise had blossomed, not even when she patted him on the face. His unresponsiveness felt eerily similar to the day he'd fainted on Asami. Everything about it felt eerily similar to that day. His pulse was slow and weird and his face was pale and there was very little about him that seemed _alive_ at all. The only difference was that this time Korra didn't have the benefit of Lin's help and Asami's level head. This time she was alone.

            "Okay," Korra said firmly. She wasn't sure if she was talking to him or if she was talking to herself. "We can do this. We can handle this."

            She doused the fire again and sat up taller, reached over and grasped both of Bolin’s arms to shake him more forcefully, but the second she moved him she recoiled in disgust. It hadn't felt right, and for reasons beyond the enormous weeping scrape on his arm. His left side had some resistance to it. The right side moved too freely. She felt a gross scraping sensation through the flesh, a weird, spasmodic twitching in the muscle.

            His shoulder was out.

            Korra sat back again, dumbfounded. It shouldn't be out of joint. It hadn't come out for a couple of weeks, at least not that she'd heard about. Asami's brace had been doing a fantastic job of holding it together, and Korra figured that by this point the thing would've healed.

            When she felt for it, she realized that the brace was gone.

            Newly worried, Korra remembered how often he'd knocked his arm out in the days immediately after the collapse, and it didn't seem so unreasonable that it had happened now the brace was gone. It had seemed like simply breathing on it would knock it out. Then there was the time he’d blown it out just by falling backward, by trying to catch himself when Opal had thrown herself on him, and in that case not even the brace had kept it in. If he'd landed on it wrong when they'd fallen just now, it would've been unreasonable for it to have _stayed in_.

            "Okay, Korra," she said, coaching herself, "you've done this before. You can do it again."

            It wasn't a lie. She'd put it back in once by herself but she'd had Bolin's pained instruction and the benefit of light. She'd been afraid that time, sure, but it hadn't been a fear for her life. Her hands hadn't been shaking quite so hard as they were now. She hadn’t been so afraid of hurting him when he'd been awake. At least he'd been able to tell her when it hurt and when to stop and when she was pulling at the wrong angle.

            She tried to remember, and she tried to be gentle. Last time he’d walked her through it step by step, explaining what to do the same way that Lin had explained to him what to do in case it came out. What he’d told her had, at the time, seemed weird and counterintuitive, but in practice had put things right in half the time he took to do it on his own, and seemed to do so with less discomfort in the long run.

            She folded his left arm, resting his hand on his stomach though she’d never understood exactly why, and then she situated herself on her rump on his right side, the misplaced arm between her knees. Then, feeling guilty and a little crude, she propped her foot against his side to brace herself, grasped his wrist and elbow, and started to pull.

            Last time she’d done it she thought she’d faint. This time was no different. The insides of his arm twisted weirdly, the joint scraped against itself, and the sensations made Korra feel sick. They felt stronger in the pitch darkness. She couldn’t see what she was doing. She could only feel it.

            Korra took it as small consolation that he wasn’t awake: The last time he’d had to coach her through the whole thing while in pain and while encouraging her not to throw up on him. If she threw up on him now at least he wouldn’t know it. And at least he wasn’t feeling her pulling on his arm.

            It took some coaching of her own before she pulled at the thing hard enough to seat it again. Last time, he’d yelled at her full out, told her that if she was just going to tug at it like a little girl that he might as well do it himself, and she’d given one last heave that finally set it right.

            He wasn’t there to yell at her this time, but she remembered the way he’d sounded and the words he’d said, and she pushed her foot into his side at the same time she pulled against his elbow, and with a disgusting _clunk_ , it fell back into place.

            Korra didn’t know why she thought he would wake up. With his wrist still in her hand, she produced her palm-sized flame in the other and watched his face expectantly. She imagined that setting his shoulder would be some magical cure-all that would bring him back, like something had connected his brain to his arm and when one was out, so was the other. Of course it didn’t work that way, she thought. How could it?

            She sat. She watched. Nothing happened.

            Korra allowed the flame to die. She curled her knees to her chest, clung to his hand between her legs, and waited some more, but still nothing happened.

            Korra couldn’t say how long she sat there watching and waiting and holding his cold, unmoving hand, rubbing at his palm. It could've been minutes or hours. In the rush of adrenaline time had passed inconsistently, but she’d not been running for a long time and the adrenaline had worn off. All that kept her alert now was the knowledge that she was the only thing standing between any investigating firebenders and her and Bolin’s untimely deaths, and that knowledge coupled with the dark and the quiet made her so nervous she thought she’d cry.

            With nothing to do but sit and think, Korra’s mind wandered into all sorts of strange places. For a while she entertained the idea of trying to carry Bolin out: She imagined she might be able to considering all the weight he’d lost. But she was tired, too. She could barely carry herself, let alone someone else, and on top of it all, she had no idea where they were or how to get out. At least if Bolin was conscious he could try to feel their way out. He could use that weird thing he did with his feet to lead them to the surface.

            It was all a moot point, though. She couldn’t carry him. She wouldn’t drag him. She couldn’t if she tried. And it didn’t seem he’d be waking up any time soon to walk out under his own power, either.

            For a while she thought about their flight from the firebenders. She thought about how Bolin had thrown the lava without a second thought, about how the burning had smelled and how the people had fallen in shriveled, charred heaps. Now she thought on the matter, it had looked completely different than she imagined it might. It had been completely different than the way Bolin had described it in his dreams. The people hadn’t sunk into it. They hadn’t melted beneath it.  Something had kept them intact, had kept some vaguely human form even after they’d died.

            It was altogether weird, and not solely because Bolin had killed them. Everything he’d done had been a little bit strange. She’d never seen him act so distant before; he’d never told her so bluntly to shut up. He’d never sounded so angry, not even in the many times he’d yelled at her. There was a coldness about him that hadn’t been forced, a coldness that didn’t fit him at all. At least before they’d left he’d tried to talk to her. At least he’d tried to ask for help. He’d tried to explain himself.

            Something made Korra think he would never do that again, and that thought brought a lump into her throat. After everything that had happened, she’d been the only one to maintain any kind of connection with him. He’d tried with everyone else, but in the end it seemed like his lifelines had crumbled away beneath the weight of mistrust and betrayal. The secrets they’d kept and the lies they’d told had ripped the whole thing apart for everyone... Except for her.

            Korra didn’t know how she’d done it. She hadn’t treated him any differently than she had before the collapse. He was the same guy he’d always been, albeit with a slightly shorter temper and a great deal more sarcasm, so there was no real reason to treat him differently. Everyone else had, though. Everyone else had tiptoed around his accident and sugar coated everything in a well-meaning attempt to shelter him that served only to blow up in their face. Korra had said it before and she’d say it again: Bolin wasn’t stupid and he’d never been stupid. He knew the score well enough.

            At a loss, Korra sank her head against his hand and closed her eyes. She wanted to talk to Asami. She was so desperate that she would’ve talked to Opal if the opportunity rose. All she wanted was for someone to help her through the jumble of feelings that had suddenly welled up in her chest. She just wanted the old Bolin back, but she didn’t know where to find him. She didn’t even know where to start. She wanted the old everything else back, too, but she wasn’t sure it was possible.

            She sniffled and stifled the crying. If she started now, she wouldn’t stop, and crying wouldn’t help anything in the long run. But she had to do something. Sitting there feeling sorry for herself wouldn’t help in the long run, either.

            Everything that was happening now had happened before, Korra knew. Everything that was wrong had been wrong already, and Bolin had come out of it just fine. It was just a matter of taking the right steps.

            She’d already recognized where the familiarity came from: The day he’d questioned the combustion bender, the day they’d found out he’d not been eating or sleeping or taking care of himself at all, and the last few days had been just as bad as they’d been then, if not worse. He’d eaten what--once?--since they’d left Zaofu, and even that had only been over the threat of violence. She’d not managed to stay up with him to see how he’d been doing through the night watch, but she knew his daytime sleeping had been poor at best.

            With a sigh, she folded his right hand over his left and scooted about to his feet. Last time, they’d forced food into him, they’d forced liquid into him and that had helped. But Korra didn’t have food or water, so there was no luck there.  The only thing that Su and Opal had done that she could replicate was to elevate his legs.

            She drew her knees up, planted his feet on her shins, and waited in the dark for something to happen. She waited for a long time, nervously rubbing at his calves. A balloon of worry inflated in her stomach, growing larger with every quiet moment, until eventually she heard the slightest groan, and the balloon burst. Her composure had gone entirely by the time she heard Bolin say weakly, “I’m guessing we’re not dead, then.”

            Carefully, Bolin pulled his ankles out of Korra’s hands and, if the labored sounds he was making were any clue, sat up.

            “We’ve got to go,” Bolin said thickly, but Korra wasn’t so sure. He hadn’t sounded good. “Come on. Help me up.”

            Korra shook her head, but when she realized that Bolin wouldn’t see the gesture in the dark she said with a sniffle, “No. You need to sit here for a few minutes. You just woke up.”

            “My shoulder came out,” Bolin said dumbly.

            “I put it back in.”

            “It hurts.”

            For the first time in all the years she’d known him, an awkward silence fell. Or maybe it was just awkward on her end. There were so many things that Korra wanted to ask him, things that she wasn’t sure how to ask. He’d killed people and she wanted to know why. He was filthy, and she wanted to know why. He was shoeless and the brace was gone. He was alone.

            At the same time, Korra didn’t want to talk. She didn’t want him to talk. The coldness had gone out of his voice, but it had been replaced with the same thick, confused quality it’d had when he’d been in hospital. And it was quiet now, too, and a little dreamy. When he’d told her to shut up he’d done it in such a commanding tone that she couldn’t argue, but the few words he’d said now sounded a little sheepish, a little uncertain.

            “Seriously,” Bolin said slowly after a few minutes, and the forced confidence in his voice startled Korra out of her thinking, “we need to go. They’ll... They have to have broken through by now. They know we’re not there and they’ll know we went down. They’re going to come looking for us.”

            Korra didn’t miss the stuttering.

            “Now help me up. Gently.”

            Unable to argue, Korra stood and ignited her palm-flame, then reached down to help Bolin to his feet. Even awake he didn’t look well, and even allowing for the soreness in his shoulder and a bit of disorientation from the fall and the unconsciousness, he didn’t sit well on his feet. He looked at the ground for a while, then rubbed at his dirty face, then set off with the slightest shuffle.

            “Where are you going?” Korra asked.

            “Out.”

            “Wait a minute,” Korra said. She rushed up beside him, holding the fire aloft to see more clearly the stern expression that had settled on his face. “We need a plan. We need to talk.”

            “The plan is to get out of here,” Bolin replied. He didn’t stop walking and he didn’t look at her. “I don’t see what there is to talk about.”

            “I want to know what happened.”

            Bolin did stop now, and he looked curiously at her with a confused expression, like the half-statement-half-question hadn’t registered. It was worrying. “What do you mean, _what happened?_ ”

            “You were with Asami,” Korra said. “Weren’t you? Where is she? Is she okay?” The slightest hint of panic had crept into the back of Korra’s mind. What if Asami wasn’t okay? What if she’d been hurt or killed?  What if that was what had pushed Bolin over the edge?

            “She’s fine,” Bolin said tersely. “Or she was when I left her."

            “When you _left_ her?”

            He nodded, then rubbed at his shoulder, and then rubbed at his forehead again before starting forward. “We need to go.”

            “I don’t want to.”

            He stopped but offered no reply.

            “I’m afraid to go.”

            He turned around, the confused expression deeper now. “What?”

            “I’m scared,” Korra said honestly. “I don’t want to go back out there--I don’t even know how we’re going to find our way back out there--but I don’t want to go! I’m tired, Bo! I don’t think I can go into the Avatar State. I’m weak and sleepy and hungry. And you,” she paused to think of words that wouldn’t come. She looked him up and down in the flickering firelight, then shook her head and looked at her feet. “What’s wrong with you? I don’t know what’s wrong with you, I can't figure it out. You wouldn’t wake up and now you’re all... Weird... And up there? I saw what you did to those people, Bolin. Don’t think for two seconds that I didn’t see it. I want to know what happened and I want to know right now, because I’m afraid I might not get another chance.”

            Bolin wasn’t looking at her anymore, but he wasn’t walking anymore, either. He’d taken to looking at his feet the same way that Korra had done. “We found Opal,” he said slowly. He sounded so strange. He sounded the way he had when Lin had questioned him about the attack, the way he had the day he’d asked Korra to start training him, except the pauses in his speech were less pronounced, the stuttering a little more fluid. “We found Opal and we were attacked. Well, we were followed... Chased... Ambushed... I don’t know... I can’t think of the word.” He paused and rubbed his forehead again. This time he kept the heels of his hands pressed against his eyes. “We found Mako. He... I don’t know. We found him, and I guess that’s all that matters. That… It was the whole point.” He paused again. Korra couldn’t tell if he was having trouble thinking of the words or if he simply didn’t want to say them. “I told Opal and Asami to get him out and get back to Oogi, and that if anything goes wrong, they need to leave. Then I came to find you.”

            “What happened to your arm?”

            “My shoulder came out.”

            “No, not that,” Korra said. She drew the flame closer to him and gently touched the scrape. It had stopped weeping, but it still looked wet. “I mean this. What happened?”

            Bolin looked at his arm for the first time, and Korra noted his surprise. He must not have seen it, or he must not have realized how ugly it was. “I fell down,” he said plainly.

            “That’s a lie,” Korra replied, stern. “You don’t _fall down_.”

            With an enormous sigh, Bolin's posture slumped and for the third time he rubbed at his face with his hands. The motion had become obvious now. Korra noticed it every time he did it, and he’d taken to doing it almost every time he spoke.

            “It was a combustion bender. He knocked me down.”

            “Are you okay?”

            “I’m fine. I'm… I'm just tired.”

            “I mean, up there? Before we fell? You were... Those people... You… Are you okay?”

            “I’m fine.”

            “Would you quit lying to me? Please? For like, five minutes?”

            “Would you get off my back about it for like five minutes?" Bolin snapped mockingly. "Would you quit riding me? The only person allowed to do that is my girlfriend, and last I checked I didn't have one of those anymore." All the thickness and hesitation had gone out of him, and his tone had been so sharp that Korra felt her eyes getting warm and wet. He immediately seemed to have noted the reaction, because he breathed deep and added in a quieter voice, "Besides, you’re not okay, either, miss _I’m going to cry on your dirty, smelly feet_. You don’t want to know where they’ve been.”

            “At least I’m not trying to be some macho guy and cover it up! I’m afraid, I already told you that! I don’t want to watch you killing people! I don’t want to die!”

            He didn’t sigh and he didn’t rub his face. With his eyes on the ground, he turned back around to approach her. He looked ashamed as he stared at the floor, and he sounded ashamed as he said, “You’re not going to die.” Then he threaded his fingers gently between hers and pulled her along behind him.

            Korra didn’t protest. She didn’t resist at all. The fluttering had come back and she didn’t know why. She couldn’t tell if it was nervousness or not. “How can you be so sure?” she asked quietly.

            “Because I won’t let you.”

            Suddenly Korra wanted to cry again, but she held it in. “What about you?”

            “We’ll see.”

            Korra had been afraid of that.


	36. Nightmares

            Everything was wrong.

            Everything was horribly, horribly wrong.

            Bolin's mind had become a weird blur, both thoughtless and thoughtful all at once. It had disconnected from the rest of him but he didn't understand how or why or when. It was like his mind existed in some strange sideways dimension, like his brain had come untethered from reality. Thoughts shot in and out fleetingly, and very rarely were the ideas grounded in the present. It felt like he was daydreaming, like he was asleep while he was awake. He felt detached. He felt unreal.

            The world felt unreal.

            Bolin tried to focus on his body and the warnings he'd been listening to so closely for so long, but he couldn't get a read. Not since he'd waked in the cavern. He couldn't understand the signals being sent to his brain. The communication was being interrupted somehow. His bare feet were hitting the ground but it seemed to him as though he was floating. He knew that his feet should hurt but there was nothing. He knew that his shoulder and arm and chest should hurt but there was nothing. He knew he should be exhausted but there was nothing. He felt nothing yet he felt everything, and he knew that he felt nothing and everything. It was as though he'd been pulled out of himself, like he was watching himself walk through the dimly lit tunnel in some kind of strange thriller on a mover screen, like whatever had happened and would happen to him wouldn't really exist, like it was all fake and terrible and inconsequential.

            The disconnect didn't stop with his mind. It extended beyond, into his vision and his sense of touch. It extended into his perception of the world around him. He recognized the rough stone corridors down which he presently walked, and he knew that he was beneath a horde of firebenders in Fire Fountain City, but he didn't understand what that meant. He'd been in this place before, but he didn't understand the significance. He knew it was all important, but he didn't know how.

            Everything looked strange. When his eyes darted between objects of focus there seemed to be a weird halo, a distortion that made everything feel as though he'd been staring at the sun before being plunged into darkness. The light from Korra's fire was beginning to hurt. His head was starting to throb.

            His perspective had somehow distorted, too, though there was no way he could have described it. His eyes focused of their own will on seemingly unimportant details, on a stone here or a crack in the wall there, and everything around that focal point shifted such that even things that he knew must be nearby seemed inexplicably far away. When he looked into the distance the corridor seemed to have narrowed dangerously, seemed to have stretched into oblivion.

            He didn't feel like himself.

            He didn't feel as part of the world.

            He'd lost his grounding.

            Everything felt as some weird fantasy that he'd thought himself into in which the people he killed weren't really people but figments of his damaged imagination. He knew he wouldn't wake until he'd delivered the fake-but-real Korra trailing behind him to safety, no matter the cost to himself.

            That thought drove him forward. If he fulfilled the mission, he would wake up. If he did what he had to do then the dream would end and he would wake up and everything would be normal.

            He just had to keep pushing.

            His mind kept threatening to come back to him, and every time it did he willed it away again. The veil of unreality that had fallen over him was scary, it was true, but facing the truth of what he'd done was more frightening still. The understanding of what had truly happened lingered somewhere in the dark parts of his brain, somewhere far behind the racing, incoherent thoughts that rushed around and crashed into each other and made everything all confused.

            He saw the people burning. He imagined them melting beneath the lava. It had been so different in reality than it had been in his dreams. In his dreams, their bodies disappeared beneath the molten waves and left no trace that they had ever existed. In reality, their corpses stayed where they fell, encased in shells of rock that hardened over their bodies when the lava met the moisture in their skin. In his dreams, they slowly sank down in the pools he created. In reality, when he opened the ground beneath them they didn't sink at all. They dropped down a few inches and then lingered on the surface, consumed by flames feet first until they fell with sickening splats and their bodies boiled and the superheated gases exploded out of them like the popping of a giant fleshy balloon. Then the lava bubbled and spat, and if they were very, very lucky, they'd be dead before it swallowed them whole and crept along the way.

            Perhaps the only thing that remained consistent between the dreams and reality was the screaming. Without fail, even the most hard-faced man devolved into hysterical screaming and flailing the instant the lava hit the mark and splattered. They tried to peel it away but it burned them more. It fused their limbs together and melted the fat and flesh like candle wax. And the times when screaming would've been most expected--the times Bolin had cast enormous swelling waves of the stuff over their heads--there was nothing. Maybe they screamed, but the thickness of the lava prevented the noise from coming out. It muffled the sound. He wondered if it had gone into their mouths or down their throats. He wondered if their eyeballs had exploded in the heat. He wondered if they had lived long enough to feel it.

            He'd never considered the crushing that way. He'd never dreamed about it before. He'd never had nightmares about bending stone because he'd never imagined it to be so deadly, but in the end it may have been worse than the lava. The lava didn't make a lot of noise, at least not in such a way that he could hear, but there had been noise with the stone. There had been crunches and splatters and squishes.

            He wondered how many times he'd come close to killing someone before, bending rocks at them without truly understanding how dangerous it was. He wondered if he'd ever be able to do it again. Once he was out of this horrible place, he wondered if he'd ever be able to bend without thinking of the bodies and the blood and the screaming.

            He stumbled.

            Or had his leg gone out from under him?

            Either way, he caught himself before he went too far.

            Korra talked to him then. He heard her voice and he heard his voice responding to her, but he didn't know what the conversation was about. He didn't know what she'd said, if it had been a statement or a question. He didn't recognize the words or the subtle, worried undertone contained in every sound she made. And his voice didn't sound like his voice, either. It wasn't the first time his voice hadn't sounded like his own. There was a time when it had sounded timid and weak and soft and boyish because he'd fainted and nearly died, and everyone he knew and loved and cared about had crowded around him to watch him falling apart at the seams. But this wasn't the same. The words came out of him and he knew they were coming out, but his voice sounded entirely foreign. It was hard and cold and low. It sounded like he was listening to himself on a radio. It sounded fake, like some stranger was trying to impersonate him and doing a middling job at best.

            The worst thing was that somewhere in the back of his mind, Bolin could hear his _real_ voice, tiny but persistent, telling him that he was a murderer. It told him that he'd done a terrible thing. It told him he'd made a horrible decision, that there had been alternatives, that he was a killer and that his hands would forever be stained with the blood of people who had once been _people_ with dreams and hopes and families.

            He was a horrible person.

            He was a murderer.

            He shouldn't be here.

            He never should have left Zaofu.

            He hadn't been ready.

            Bolin drew a deep breath and tightened his grip on Korra's hand. All he had to do was focus on the thoughts that came one after another in an endless loop, the thoughts that occasionally broke through the haze of unreality and tethered him back to the world. One foot in front of the other. Maintain an upward course. Keep breathing so you don't pass out.        Don't fall down. Keep hold of Korra's hand. If someone comes around that corner, do something. Do whatever it takes to keep Korra safe. She's the Avatar. Her life is worth more than yours. Do whatever it takes. If you lose her, you've failed.

            He shuddered, and Korra asked if he was all right. He didn't say anything back to her. There was nothing _to_ say. He just had to keep going. He couldn't let her know how strange he felt. He couldn't let her know how far his mind had gone.

            It was pure stubborn willpower that kept Bolin going. Every inch of his body screamed for relief, but his mind wouldn't slow down. His link to reality broke and mended, broke and mended. The thoughts wouldn't quit and his body couldn't rest; his head was pounding and his hands were shaking and his skin wouldn't stop crawling. Every part of him filled with a strange, intense tingle. Every bump he felt through the earth set him even farther on edge. Every time Korra's fingers twitched between his own he worried that it was the end, that she'd seen or heard or felt something that he'd not picked up on.

            And what of Korra? She'd seen it all. She'd said it herself: She knew what he'd been doing, she'd seen it and she'd understood it. It had frightened her. She hadn't said that part but Bolin knew. He could feel it in her, and he wondered what she saw when she looked at him. He wondered what she thought of him now they were in the dark and all they could rely on was each other.

            And what of Opal and Asami? What of Mako? The girls had watched him crush the firebenders in the hall. They'd heard the disgusting, guttural noise he'd made when he heaved the rock from the ground. They'd probably watched the guts come shooting out of the cracks between the stones. They'd probably seen the arm. They might've even seen who it belonged to. Maybe it had been the combustion bender who'd knocked Bolin from his feet to skid into the corpse on the floor. He didn't know. He hadn't been watching.

            Mako had to have seen the aftermath. He had to have heard the racket, even if he didn't know what was happening at the time. Even if he was mindless with shock, he'd have looked at the bloody corridor, and though it might take some time he would piece together the truth. He'd eventually come to understand exactly what had happened. There had only been one earthbender in the tunnels.

            He wondered how it would change things. He wondered if it would change them at all. Everything had already gotten so bad; he'd alienated himself from everyone he cared about. He'd yelled at everyone and hit them and hurt them and otherwise pushed them away so far that he'd be surprised if they could drift any farther.

            But he'd killed people. That _had_ to change something. It had certainly changed something in him. He recognized that it had, but he couldn't describe it. There was a time before and there was a time after. He knew that. But he couldn't have numbered the moments between to save his life. The change must have happened when he'd realized what he'd done, when he'd turned around to see that hand dangling from the ceiling, when he'd recognized the blood on the rock for what it was and when he understood that the weird wetness he'd landed in hadn't been his own blood or a puddle of water, but the seeping remains of some poor idiot who'd gotten himself killed.

            No, things would never be the same. Even if the others pretended like everything was okay Bolin knew better. Somewhere deep inside them, they would all be afraid of him, afraid of what he could do when he lost control and perhaps more afraid of what he could do when he kept it. And if they weren't already terrified of his outbursts and panic attacks, they certainly would be now. The panic had driven it all.

            He hated himself. He was afraid of himself. He was afraid of the consequences once everything was said and done. He was afraid of what would happen if he was unlucky enough to make it out of this mess alive. He'd return to Republic City or Zaofu where news would almost certainly spread of how he had roasted a couple dozen people alive and kept a straight face about it. Someone would tell. It would probably be Korra, with her gigantic mouth. Tenzin and Pema would find out. Beifong would find out. Su would find out.

            Under the weight of that thought Bolin's knee really did buckle, and then he was sitting on his feet on the ground, his palms flat on the stone while he reeled.

He heard Korra gasp the instant he fell, and before he had the chance to make up some kind of excuse she was down on her knees beside him, that infernal flame in hand shining light directly into his eyes. It was blinding. It hurt.

            "Are you okay?"

            It was a stupid question and Bolin wanted to say so, but something had happened to his throat that made the words impossible. He could breathe and he could move and he wasn't panicking again, but a lump had blocked his voice from coming out of him. He nodded and closed his eyes. The room was spinning.

            "When... When was the last time you ate?"

            "Shut up."

            Korra didn't shut up, but she lowered her voice to a hoarse whisper. "We need to stop. You need to rest."

            Effortfully and with the slightest stagger, Bolin pushed himself back to his feet and steadied himself against the wall. He swallowed hard. "No, we need to keep going. If we stop, we're never getting out of here."

            "I thought that was the idea."

            Confused, Bolin glared at Korra while she stood back up. She looked somewhere between sad and angry but he couldn't tell. He couldn't read the look on her face and he wasn't sure if it was because he'd not seen it before or because something in his brain had shut down.

            "Don't look at me like that," Korra said. Her voice sounded very far away. It sounded like it was floating. "You know exactly what I'm talking about. I'm not stupid. You don't want to go home. You came here to die."

            Bolin couldn't say anything. The lump had come back. The thoughts wouldn't form. So he took a deep breath, grabbed Korra's free hand, and set off.

            "And the fact that you're not saying anything doesn't prove me wrong."

            "What do you want me to say?"

            "Anything."

            Bolin sighed. He thought for a fleeting moment about halting again, but then thought better. To stop would make them a target. At least if they kept moving it would be harder for the firebenders to find them.

            "I'm getting you back to the bison," Bolin said at last. "And then you're going to get out of here."

            Korra stopped dead in her tracks, and when Bolin pulled at her to keep going, she yanked him back hard enough that he stumbled again and his shoulder seared anew. He felt a grinding separation in the joint. He wanted to yell at her but held his breath instead.

            "Look," Korra said, her whisper low and dangerous now, "I need to make something really clear to you, okay?" She paused as if she expected him to nod. When he didn't, she went on with intentional clarity. "You are coming home with us. Do you understand that? I'm not letting you stay here. I'm not letting you die here, and you're being ridiculous if you think otherwise."

            It took a long time for the words to sink in, but when they finally did, all Bolin could say was, "Why?"

            "Because I..." Korra stopped suddenly and looked at the floor. Her expression had changed but Bolin didn't know what it reflected. Her voice turned soft but he didn't know why. "I need you to come home with us," she continued. "Because you and I have some things we need to work out and it's not going to happen if--"

            "You've got to be kidding me."

            The words had fallen out of him before he had the chance to stop them, and they'd dripped venom that he'd not intended.

            Korra shut up.

            "You're seriously doing this right now?" Bolin continued, his own whisper growing ever more uncontrolled. "You're _seriously_ going to discuss this right now?"

            Korra stammered, but she couldn't force out a reply.

            "You are absolutely unbelievable, you know that?" Bolin turned around and began to set off, but then thought again, stopped, and rounded on Korra angrily. "You know what? I'm going to work this _something_ out for us right here and right now: I don't need you to babysit me and I don't need you to pity me... I don't need you and I don't need anyone else. I can handle myself. Whatever it is you're trying to prove with this _caring about me_ bit is... Is... Well, it's pointless. You're not changing my mind about anything and you're definitely not making me feel better!"

            "Bolin, I--"

            "Oh no. No you don't. Every time you say my name like that I end up in worse trouble than I started. So just shut up and leave me alone! Let me do what I'm going to do to get you out of here and just... Just worry about yourself for once!"

            His stumbling couldn't have happened at a more inconvenient time, and Bolin knew it as soon as he turned around and his head started spinning. He'd moved too fast and the wall came to meet him entirely too quickly. The lull between fighting had him feeling weak and sick all over again. The weird detachment faded just enough for him to gain awareness of his self, and Bolin knew that such awareness only made things worse. The panic had been all that was holding him together, and now that it was gone he was falling apart again.

            Every sensation he'd been trying to ignore seemed to hit him at once. His skin tingled weirdly and an unfamiliar flutter tightened his chest and stole his breath. The shaking in his hands felt worse than it'd been before, and what had once been a warm sweat of exertion had gone cold and clammy. All the effects of the adrenaline had gone away, and in their absence he wanted to faint.

            He leaned against the stone and closed his eyes, embarrassed and exhausted.

            "Yeah," Korra said dryly, the whisper all but gone. "About that whole _not worrying_ thing. You're making it a little difficult."

            "Shut up."

            Korra stood stunned while Bolin regained his balance, and he turned back toward her, his eyes focused on some point in the distance. He'd stopped paying attention to her. Something had moved while he'd been standing there. He'd felt it through his feet and through the wall. He'd felt it through all that was wrong with his body, but Korra hadn't noticed. She couldn't have noticed: She couldn't feel the vibrations.

            Korra kept on with her ranting. "I'd have thought by now you'd have figured out that telling me to shut up all the time won't actually make me--"

            Bolin clapped one hand over Korra's mouth, turned her around with the other, and held her close to his chest. Satisfied that he'd startled her into silence, he let go her mouth and grasped the hand holding the flame to force it to her side, and then he pointed back down the way they'd come.

            Korra drew a sharp breath.

            She'd seen it, too. Someone had followed them.

            Bolin lowered his chin to her shoulder and kept staring into the dark while he gave his instruction. "You need to go on," he said, his whisper more forceful than it had been before. "I'll follow."

            "Absolutely not!" Korra replied. She rounded on him with a look like she was going to yell, and when she opened her mouth Bolin clapped his hand over it again.

            "No." There was no argument to be had. Things were going to get bad and worse again, and Bolin didn't want Korra to be in the middle of it. He didn't want her to be anywhere nearby when he set to work with the lava. He didn't want her to be anywhere nearby if his body gave out. She had to go, and she had to go now. "Get out of here."

            When Bolin lowered his hand again, Korra didn't move. "How do I know you're actually going to follow me?" she asked.

            Bolin looked at the ground, a little ashamed, but then he rolled his shoulders and started into the dark. "Because I can't be finished until you're out of here."

            "If you die you know I'll never forgive you."

            Korra took off, but Bolin didn't watch her go. Her words had come out just as tersely as his own had, but her emotions didn't match. She was scared.

            If Bolin was truthful with himself, he was scared, too. There could be no telling what was coming after him or how many firebenders were trailing them, how many of them were capable of combustion or lightning, how many of them would open fire in the tight corridor without a second glance. Add to that the terrible sick feeling in his body and the unpredictable detachment of his mind, and there was no way to know how things would go. The thought made him tense and the panic began to well up again.

            He didn't try to fight it.

            As he walked and waited he felt the change, the weird shift in him that had taken over when he'd found Korra and fled. It was the same feeling that had come over him when he saw Opal fall. His senses felt sharper, his vision less blurred, his hearing more acute. But that came at the expense of his rationality. Pure, blind instinct would take over the minute he saw the firebenders, and beyond that point there would be no more control until the fighting was over and he came back to himself. That was supposed to be how it worked, anyway. Last time he hadn't come back to himself at all. Last time he'd detached from reality almost entirely.

            He crouched low and watched as the darkness came and went, as shadows passed through the corridor far down the way. Then an idea struck. He and Korra had progressed along a generally ascending path: If he set the lava in motion, gravity would pull it along and nature would do the work for him. It might prevent more death, too. They might see it coming and flee before it could do any damage.

            He hoped.

            Bolin pressed the pads of his fingers against the ground and braced himself. Then he drove his hands into the earth, sending a mighty wave rolling through the rock, and as it advanced it liquefied and filled the corridor from wall to wall. It flowed with speed he'd not expected.

            Satisfied that the barrier would work, Bolin turned and ran. He didn't want to see what happened when the light radiating off the lava reached the shadows. He didn't want to know how the firebenders would react. He didn't want to hear the noises again. When the shouting started, he tried to close his ears.

            He found Korra some distance ahead, and though she was certainly making progress she wasn't doing it with purpose. He didn't stop to scold her for waiting, but as he passed grabbed her roughly by the arm and cast her ahead.

            "That's not going to hold them off for long," Bolin said breathlessly. "We've got to get out."

            The shouting that echoed down through the corridor shifted in its tone and volume until what once had been commanding orders deteriorated into shrieks of fear and pain that set Bolin's stomach to turning.

            "I thought..." Korra started, her pace slowing a bit. She looked over her shoulder and behind. “I thought you were…” Bolin pushed her along again, and she stopped speaking. She looked afraid again. She looked disgusted.

            Bolin kept pressing. He kept his hand firmly planted between Korra's shoulders, pushing her as fast as he could go. When she raised her hand to ignite her flame, he forced it back to her side and held it there. They couldn't afford the light. They couldn't afford to draw any more attention to themselves than they already had.

            When he saw another flicker ahead, he grabbed Korra by the shoulder and yanked her back, a dread filling him from head to foot. Surrounded? They must have been. Or a squad of guards must have heard the yelling. The sounds had filled the corridor and then stopped again. The sudden change must have drawn them down.

            But that meant there was an entrance nearby. There must be a way out.

            Bolin didn’t think twice about jumping ahead of Korra to meet the light head on. He didn’t think at all, and when the firebenders rounded the corner he sprang to motion.

            They didn’t see it coming. With a mighty heave, Bolin pulled a ten-foot span of the ceiling down and a rain of dirt and rock fell atop them, burying the lot. This time there wasn’t any screaming. The tunnel collapsing on them had muffled the sounds of death, and when the enormous chunks of stone settled and the dust cleared only a single person remained visible, buried to his chest with his face in the dirt.

            He wasn’t dead, but he would be soon.

            The flutter hit Bolin in the chest again, pulling the breath from his lungs and tightening it such that he had to work hard to breathe. It made him lightheaded. Ignoring it, he marched forward and crouched low. “How do we get out?” he asked. He wasn't surprised to hear the cold, low quality in his voice again. The tone was frightening. It was unreal. “Where is the exit?”

            The soldier lifted his head. He looked in a daze, like he hadn’t fully understood what just happened. The realization seemed to come on him slowly--it could've been Bolin's perception skewing again--but eventually the man’s eyes grew wide and his mouth hung open and he stared at Bolin with a look of abject horror. Then the shock set in.

            The firebender screamed. He wailed and he cried and he writhed and pried at the rocks pinning his body like he was going to lift them away. There was no way it would work. He'd been all but crushed. There was no way he’d get himself out, and even if he did, he'd bleed out almost immediately.

            The noises he was making were disgusting and inhuman. They were noises that Bolin knew he would never forget the same way he’d never forget the crunching of bones and the screaming of people burning in the lava. The only difference was that these noises wouldn’t stop. The firebender wasn’t dying quickly, he was just lying there suffering.

            Bolin had to stop it. It would be an act of mercy.

            At a loss for what to do, Bolin palmed the firebender’s head in his shaking hand and slammed it to the ground. He had to stop the noise before it drew more attention. He had to stop it before it made him sick.

            “Shut up!”

            The firebender whimpered pathetically and squinted his eyes closed. There was dirt stuck to his face. The whole situation made Bolin want to throw up, but he didn’t know what else to do. The damage had been done, and now that the firebender was lying there he may as well prove of some use.

            “Tell me how to get out of here and I’ll let you go.”

            It wasn’t wholly a lie. He’d be let go, but in no way he likely imagined.

            The firebender cried. He pressed his forehead into the ground and tried futilely to get his hands beneath himself. It was like watching a wounded animal.

            “How do we get out?”

            At last the firebender responded. He thrust his finger back the way he’d come and said tremulously, “Right."

            “Thank you.”

            It struck Bolin as profoundly strange the way the response had come out of him. It was ridiculous now he thought on it. Here he was in the midst of a flat-out killing spree, and he was thanking a dying man for directions he’d gotten by force.

            He didn’t know what he was doing anymore.

            Bolin stood and looked back at Korra, but he could only hold her gaze for a fluttering heartbeat. She hadn’t moved from the spot he’d left her, and as she stood there gaping at him her hands crept up to her mouth in fear. She looked revolted. She looked like everything Bolin had done and would do was an affront to humanity.

            And it was.

            He looked at the ground and listened while the buried firebender whimpered and cried and begged to be spared. Then, with a steadying breath, he turned back to the pile of stone and dirt, planted his feet, and at the same time he liquefied the rock he pulled it forward, covering the soldier and leveling the ground. It lingered there for a time, and the lava swelled and bubbled as the gases released. Then, satisfied that the deed was done, he cooled the ground and said quietly, “Come on, let’s go.”

            He didn’t wait for Korra to catch up before he rushed on. He didn't want to look at her, and he assumed that she didn't want to look at him. He wouldn't have wanted to look at himself either if he was in her shoes. He didn't want to _be_ himself. He didn't want to _be_ at all.

            Yet here he was, stuck and desperate to detach again, but he didn't know how. It had come naturally the last time, it had happened against his will and he'd not recognized the weirdness until well after it had faded and he'd come back to himself. It was strange how badly he wanted it back.

            All he had to do was convince himself it wasn't real. All he had to do was repeat the litany over and over until it sank into his thick skull. The thoughts cycled through his mind effortlessly: This was a sick dream his mind had contrived after the collapse. None of this was happening. These people weren't real. He'd been attacked by the combustion bender and everything thereafter was his mind realizing a primal urge for revenge. Everything he'd done since that horrible day was an attempt at vindication, at reclaiming his brain and his personality and his dignity and everything else he'd lost when that building had come down on top of him.

            It was all a dream. None of these people were real. As long as he pushed through to the end of it, he'd wake up. Things would be normal. He'd be happy. He'd have Opal. He'd be healthy. All he had to do was deliver Korra safely to the bison. The rest didn't matter.

            The rest didn't matter.

            None of it mattered.

            It was all a dream.

            He was asleep. He was unconscious. He was dead. He was anything that would make what he'd been doing a fantasy.

            Without ever knowing, Bolin detached, and even when Korra managed to catch him and lock her hand in his he didn't come back. She wasn't real. She was a figment of his imagination, an arbitrary icon in a meaningless test that he could pass or fail without consequence. Even if he died in the end, he'd wake up in his bed in the hospital and be slow and stupid but altogether safe, and he'd start over again. The dream would break. The firebenders would be alive. He wouldn't be a murderer.

            Bolin had gotten so lost in his brain that he barely noticed the sharp shift in the angle of the tunnel, the way it transitioned into a delicately crafted hallway, the way the ground leveled out and rose in a long, steep staircase. All he recognized of the outside was the bizarrely intimate feeling of Korra's fingers between his, the feeling of her sweaty palm against his sweaty palm, and he concentrated on that connection with every fiber of his being. If he didn't, he'd get caught up in everything else. He'd get caught up in the constant, burning flutter in his chest, the encroaching dizziness, the prickling pain in his legs as he pushed himself forward, the nausea, and the cold sweat dripping down his _everything_. He'd get caught up in what he was doing, and if he got caught up with that he'd hesitate and his instinct would fail. If his instinct failed, they would both die.

            He couldn't let that happen.

            He had to press on.

            He had to wake up.

            If Bolin had had his head about him he'd have dropped Korra's hand before beginning to bend, but he didn't, and the second he registered foreign bodies in the suddenly red-carpeted, ornately decorated hallway, he unleashed with reckless ferocity. He pulled at the walls left-handed, thrust the rock forward and into the enemy line as quickly and powerfully as he could, and for a moment he was immune to the agonizing strain in his ribs. He didn't see the arcs of lightning and bolts of fire passing inches to the side of his head. He didn't recognize his own reflexive dodging or Korra's cries of alarm. He only knew that the rocks hadn't finished the job, and he was barreling toward the enemy while a few were still standing.

            Desperate, Bolin heaved Korra toward the wall and dove into the fray. The first firebender fell immediately when Bolin's fist connected with the side of his head, and the second, stunned by the sudden offensive, followed shortly after. Bolin made every strike count. He punched so forcefully that for a fraction of a second he remembered reality, that his shoulder was weak and could dislocate if a stiff wind blew the wrong way, and he changed tack accordingly. Two handed, he ripped a slab of rock from the wall and cast it at the remaining firebenders, who fell beneath its weight and didn't get back up.

            It happened so fast that Korra hadn't yet regained her feet, and when Bolin's hand found hers again and he pulled her up, she looked at the carnage wide-eyed with wonder. It seemed as though she said something, but Bolin didn't hear it and didn't stop to ask. There wasn't enough time for that.

            Together and temporarily uncontested, Bolin and Korra burst out into the open.

            The sky was dark but light. The east had begun to burn with the warmth of daybreak, but the west had gone eerily bright, too. A halo of red-orange light rose above the buildings before diffusing into the dark, and here and there plumes of thick black smoke rose into the sky. A strange heat had fallen over the city that Bolin couldn't think to explain away.

            He barely paused before dragging Korra eastward, back into the narrow and dangerous alleys between buildings. He didn't stop when the firebenders presented themselves. He didn't lob rock at them. If ever there was a time for full-on lavabending, it was now. He'd brought Korra too close to safety for anything less. Anything less would leave her vulnerable, and vulnerability meant death.

            At every intersection, Bolin sent recklessly large waves of lava hurtling down the way to protect their flanks, and the lava crept on around corners and into foundations, burning wood and liquefying rock and summarily killing any fool too slow or too stubborn to run away.

            He didn't break stride, not when combustion bolts burst at their feet and showered them with debris. He didn't break stride when a group of five firebenders intercepted their path and he stomped mid-step to produce a pillar of rock that sent them skyward. He heard them land with sickening cracks, but he didn't look. He was too focused to look.

            The end was in sight. He could see the boundaries of the city, the last buildings along the path that would lead back up the mountain, back into the clearing where Oogi and safety awaited. It was the home stretch, and it was a good thing. The exhaustion had begun breaking through the wall of detachment. A persistent sense of impending doom had fallen over Bolin that he couldn't shake. Something was desperately wrong.

            As they neared the outer limits of the city, Bolin heaved Korra ahead, threw her so hard she stumbled, and as he rounded to close off the way behind he shouted at her to run, that he would follow when he could. Without listening for a response he opened the earth before him and pushed down against the lava, producing an enormous swell that rose and broke and fell again, flooding the path back into the city and spreading through every turn between every building as far as he could see. He threw the lava wide and far, spreading it to every surface he could find regardless of its structure or population, and when he turned to flee he could hear the cracks and snaps of buildings threatening to fall. He could hear buildings crumbling in the distance. He could hear the roar of the lava eating away at everything.

            It sounded like thunder.

            Bolin rushed up the path. He stumbled. He caught himself and ran again. The tingling in his limbs had given way to complete numbness, and the floating sensation was no longer solely a result of his detachment. Now it was physical. It was mental. It was everything and nothing all at once.

            He crested the ridge that concealed their tidy clearing from the city, prepared to see Korra safe and for relief to wash over him. He crested the hill prepared to realize he'd been successful and wake up. He crested the hill to see Korra sprinting ahead, two firebenders flanking her and gaining ground on her fast. She'd been just as tired as Bolin was. She didn't have the energy to push through.

            He had to do something before they struck.

            At the perimeter of their clearing the earth rose around their path as a small valley between hills, and when Korra passed through it, Bolin made his move. It was perfect. It was narrow and enclosed so the only way out was forward or back, and if Bolin had the back locked down, there would be nowhere to run.

            The first firebender wound up to strike and the second paused behind, assuming the telltale posture of combustion, and Bolin's instinct took over. He wasn't sure what sound came out of him, if it was a word or if it was an incoherent yell or if it was a cry of exertion, but it came forth with such volume and power that the first firebender stopped dead in his tracks. At the same time the firebender turned about Bolin swept his right hand low, drawing the lava from the earth as he'd trained himself so relentlessly to do in Zaofu, and with the full force of his body he whipped it forward. As his right hand rose in a painful diagonal follow-through, fingers spread wide, he grasped at the tendril with his left and willed the lava to respond.

            The combustion bender fell with a breathy, sickening grunt when the shards connected with his back. And for a fleeting, fluttering heartbeat, the first firebender stood stone still, staring at Bolin with the empty eyes of death. Then he fell, too, and the blood pooled thick around his punctured neck.

            Bolin rushed on between the fallen soldiers, his bare feet squishing in the warm, bloody mud, and he broke into the clearing at a dead sprint just in time to see Korra scrambling into the back of the sky bison's basket with Asami's help, the others staring dumbly out. With a left-handed thrust, he raised a column of earth that threw him hard enough to land clumsily in Oogi's basket. He stumbled unceremoniously to his knees.

            "Go!" he screamed, throwing his arm out in a desperate gesture. "Go! Go!"

            He hadn't needed to yell. The moment he'd touched down someone had coaxed Oogi into the air, and within seconds the world had gone quiet and cold with the breeze of flight.

            Bolin couldn't hear. His ears rang and his chest heaved. His hands were numb. His head was spinning. Still, he forced himself up and braced himself against the walls of the basket, and he stared back at Baihe Island as it began to slowly shrink into the distance.

            He didn't know what possessed him to look. He wished he hadn't.

            The red-orange glow of lava had engulfed the whole of Fire Fountain City, and even as Bolin stared dumbfounded by his own potency, buildings crumbled into the ocean of molten earth that spread over the land. Small islands of rock--debris from the buildings, no doubt--peeked out from the ground, and Bolin imagined people cowering atop them. To punctuate the horror, the fire-belching statue sagged, lingered for an impossible moment, and then tumbled sideward and out of sight.

            "Wake up," he whispered desperately. He couldn't hear himself. He could only feel the vibration in his throat as the words came out of him. "Wake up. Wake up."

            He recognized the dream come to life. He recognized the expanse of lava that had plagued his sleep for weeks. Fire Fountain City was the Ba Sing Se that wasn't Ba Sing Se, and the enemy firebenders--could he even call them enemies?--had been the people who weren't people. The combustion benders had chased him just as they had in his dream. He'd run from them in fear. And just as it had in his dream, the tide shifted, and in the end of things _he_ was the one doing the chasing. He had been the one attacking.

            A shock of cold washed over Bolin, numbing him from his head to his toes. It was the nightmare. But how could it be? He was already dreaming. He knew he was dreaming. He had to have been dreaming.

            Bolin didn't know how long he stood there watching the city burn before he felt Korra's hand gentle on his shoulder. It startled him out of the calm of disbelief and he looked at her confused beyond reason. He wasn't ready to talk. He wasn't even ready to stand. Every part of him felt on the edge of giving out.

            Her mouth moved and he heard her say something, but the message didn't cut through his own mounting terror. He'd delivered her to safety. That was the deal: He was supposed to get Korra to safety and then he would wake up. Once he fulfilled the goal everything would disappear and the nightmare would end.

            He stammered for a few long seconds, incapable of forming words strong enough to convey his surprise. "What... You... What are you... What are you doing here?" He heard himself. He sounded distant and sick again. He sounded the same way he had the night he'd been sentenced to Zaofu, all weak and boyish and quiet. He could scarcely understand the words for the quivering in his voice. It didn't stop them pouring out. "You're not supposed to be here. What are you doing here?"

            Korra's face scrunched up. He'd confused her. "What are you talking about?" She'd practically whispered the words. Her confusion changed to concern. She looked worried. She looked like Su had looked. She looked like Asami had looked. "Bolin, what are you..."

            "You can't be here," Bolin said, more frantic now. "You're not supposed to be here!"

            Korra's puzzlement deepened, and she looked around. Bolin followed her eyes as they landed on Asami and Opal and Mako all staring back at them with weird looks of revulsion and disbelief. When his gaze snapped back to Korra, she'd started staring at him, too. Everyone was looking at him like they'd looked at him the night he'd collapsed. They were looking at him like he was a stranger. They were looking at him like he was a monster.

            The reality of the matter dawned on him very, very slowly, and with each step his mind took toward the truth the feelings of fear and denial multiplied. He kept telling himself to wake up. He kept willing himself to wake up, but no matter how hard he concentrated, nothing changed. The panic welled up again and Bolin's first instinct was to run, but there was nowhere to go. He was hundreds of feet in the air.

            As it had so many times before, the anxiety stole away his awareness. It made his body act of its own accord, without the instruction of his mind or the benefit of reason. His stomach twisted and he felt suddenly very lightheaded. As his breathing quickened he recognized again the fluttering in his chest. He'd started shaking his head in disbelief, but he didn't recognize the action until Korra stepped closer and caught his face in her hands. The touch was surreal. Her palms were still sweaty, and they felt weird and warm pressing against his cheeks and his neck. But they felt real. Everything about everything felt real from Korra's touch to the sick sensations rolling through the rest of him.

            "Hey," Korra said, a bit firmer of tone now she'd caught him. "Look at me."

            He wanted to run. He wanted to hide. He didn't want to look at her and see the horrible expression he knew she'd be wearing. He'd seen that expression before. Futilely, he  squinted his eyes closed and tried to turn his face to the ground. He heard the weird boyish voice saying, "No, no, no," over and over again. He couldn't catch his breath. "You can't be here," Bolin said. "None of you can be here. You're not supposed to--" He choked on his own heaving breaths and panted, unable to complete the thought.

            Korra wouldn't let him retreat. She held him firm, and when he turned his face away from her she moved to stay in his line of sight. She leaned down when he cast his eyes to the ground, and she watched him with unmistakable worry.

            "Look at me," she commanded. "Please.”

            He looked at her, horrified. "I have to wake up. You can't be here."

            Korra's face softened in what looked like pity. Bolin didn't know. And when she spoke again her voice was no longer commanding; her voice was soft and inoffensive. It was as neutral as Bolin imagined it had ever sounded before.

            "…Where do you think you are?"

            He was supposed to be in the hospital. He was supposed to be in his bed waking from this weird series of nightmares. But Bolin knew somehow that it wasn't a dream. His dreams weren't self-aware. His dreams had never sounded so real or looked so real or felt so real. This was reality. He wasn't going to wake up.

            It was all real. He'd really crushed those people. He'd really heaved lava at them. He really was a murderer.

            With an uncontrollable tremble, he grasped Korra's wrists either side of his head and held them as tightly as he dared. She was real. She was there, and she'd seen everything he'd done.

            "You need to sit down," Korra said so quietly that Bolin was certain he was the only one that could hear her. "Come on. Sit down with me."

            He didn't sit. All he could do was shake his head and pant and say, "No, no, no," all over again. He couldn't contain the panic, and it washed over him more completely than it had ever done before. It swallowed him like a horrible high tide so that eventually he couldn't even speak. He couldn't utter a single syllable and he couldn't keep his eyes open. Every muscle tensed and he felt his body working to double over. He squeezed Korra's wrists so hard that he could feel her pulse in his hands. He held his breath.

            The flutter hit harder than ever, and next Bolin knew he'd landed on all fours, his chest and back heaving uncontrolled. He didn't remember falling. He didn't remember letting go of Korra's wrists. When he forced his eyes open again he saw his hands and his arms all dirt-stained and bloodied. He watched beads of sweat trickle down, leaving tiny trails of white skin and shining metal in their wake.

            His vision swam, and Bolin swooned again.

            All at once he felt Korra's hands on his back, on his shoulders holding him up. She whispered at him, "Are you okay? What's going on? Talk to me, you have to talk to me." But Bolin didn't know how to respond. He didn't know if he could respond if he tried, and he desperately wanted to try. Korra sounded on the edge of tears now, a little panicked herself, and there was little Bolin wanted less than to cause more trouble than he already had.

            "Please," Korra begged, "what's going on?"

            At a loss, Bolin grabbed Korra's hand clumsily and pressed it flat against his throat so firmly that he could feel the fluttering of his pulse against her palm. He held it there until he felt her react.

            "Asami!"

            Korra's voice had gone shaky and unusually high pitched, and in the seconds between her call and the feeling of Asami dropping down beside them, she pulled him forward and planted his forehead on her thighs. It was a kind gesture. If nothing else it kept him from having to put his face on the floor.

            He slumped, weak, and lay with his head pressing into Korra's stomach and his face on her legs, doubled over on his knees. And in a last, desperate attempt to hide, he clasped his hands behind his head and pulled his elbows in to block his face. While Korra shushed him and touched his arms and rubbed at the back of his neck, he felt Asami's cold, clinical hands feeling about his throat and his chest.

            "What _is_ that?" he heard Asami ask.

            "I don't know!" Korra replied.

            Their voices had begun to fade. All the sound stretched and softened until again it sounded like everything was passing through an impossibly long tunnel. He heard Asami and Korra's tense, frightened discussion, but he stopped being able to attach meaning to the sounds. Then he stopped hearing their voices entirely so the only thing left in his ears was his own heaving, choking breath. Then he didn't even hear that.

            The last thing he felt was Korra's hand gentle against the back of his neck. Then a weird warmth came over him, and he didn't fight against it. He couldn't. He was too tired to fight against it, too winded and too weak, and the exhaustion took him before he could ever consider the consequences.


	37. Broken

            In the long list of strange and disturbing things that Mako had recently experienced, he couldn't decide which was the worst. Certainly, everything that had happened since he'd returned from Republic City would fit comfortably on the list. Jing and Fa's betrayal had blindsided him. Guan's manipulations had terrified him. There had been his capture. There was the fight that left him all but dead. It might have left him dead, for that matter, but Mako would never know for sure. There was no way he _could_ know, being that he hadn't seen it from the outside. He'd waked and wondered and wasted away, and every time he considered the time between his fight with the firebenders and when he woke up in his cell he remembered the dark.

            The dark had been frightening. It had been full of nothing. It had passed in the blink of an eye that Mako knew now had been hours.

            In a certain way, the dark had been nice, though. The nothing had given him a reprieve from the pain and the worry and the stress of managing his identities. He supposed he was getting the same benefit now, even without the nothing. Now he had only one identity to manage: His identity as a Republic City detective who'd been kidnapped and brainwashed and used.

            Mako the Captain was dead. Mako the Captain had died along with the rest of his quad.

            As he sat in his cell, he truly believed that watching Yaozhu die would be the most disturbing thing he would see for the rest of his life. It had certainly been the worst thing he'd seen to date. The way Yaozhu had squirmed had made him seem an animal, and the noises he made had haunted Mako's sleep ever since. 

            But then Mako had watched Yaozhu decompose, and that process had been infinitely more disturbing than the death itself. It was weird in a scientific kind of way, how the flesh began to discolor and the body filled with gases. Mako thought at first that that would've been the end of it. He'd never had experience with the dead, not so intimately, so he didn't know that the gas-filled spaces would pop gently open or that from the abscesses would leak a thick, dark, and pungent fluid. He'd never known that the decay would set in so quickly, and for the first hours after the first cavity had opened he wanted to vomit from the smell. But then he sat with it. He breathed it in and out, and over time the odor grew less offensive. He got used to it.

            As he sat in his cell with Yaozhu's corpse to keep him company, Mako made a decision: He was going to stay alive. He wouldn't just stay alive; he would _thrive_ , even in the terrible conditions in which he'd been left, so that if the time came for him to escape, he'd be prepared. He'd stay as active as he could, and he'd keep himself at the ready.

            With nothing in the way of food, Mako's work was necessarily limited. But he tried. He'd made something of himself in the last few weeks, had grown strong and determined, and he wasn't about to let that go if he could help it. If the Democratic Society of Firebenders had given him nothing else, it had given him discipline and an awareness of his body that he'd never had before. He knew when he could train and he knew when he needed to rest. He knew when he felt sick. He knew when he needed to lay down.

            It had been during one of these restful periods when screaming had echoed through the darkness. They had been screams of people he'd not recognized, and had come coupled with the sounds of firebending and earthbending. He'd heard frantic footsteps like a stampede of people were rushing away from something.

            Mako put it together quickly after Guan's last visit, if it could even be called a visit. He'd walked past the cell all aloof and said, "This will be the last time we see each other," before continuing along the way. Mako knew then that they had culled the captive prisoners. The bending he'd heard had been the fighting.

            After Guan had doused the torch and left him alone Mako had been certain he was going to die. He knew that they'd kill him the same way they'd killed the earthbenders, otherwise they'd leave him to die naturally from starvation and exposure. He'd been oddly okay with the idea, almost ambivalent. Both the times he should've died he'd not been afraid until he woke up and realized that he'd been unconscious.

            He sat in the dark for a while. He sat in the dark for a long, long time. He knew it even without the benefit of a clock. He stopped hearing noises entirely except for the occasional seeping of air from Yaozhu and skittering of bugs over the floor, and for a while he wondered if perhaps the city had been abandoned.

            It wouldn't be the first time the Society had abandoned a stronghold under threat, and it would make sense for them to eliminate any unnecessary baggage. Earthbenders and waterbenders could be found anywhere they went: Firebenders were indispensable.

            Except for him.

            After the culling, the whole place went silent for hours that Mako couldn't count. Those were his darkest hours, the hours that he was certain he would die there alone and starving and inundated with the smell of rotting flesh. They were the hours that he gave up. He didn't have a choice. He didn't have an escape. He wasn't an earthbender, and there was no way his firebending would cut through the bars.

            He spent those hours thinking about Korra and Asami and how he'd never see them again. He thought about how he'd never have the chance to tell them he loved them and that he was sorry that he'd gone away and left them with such a mess.

            Then he thought about Bolin, and despair and disappointment washed over him so completely that he cried. He'd always hoped that in the end he'd be able to go pay his respects in Zaofu, that he'd be able to put things to rest and clear his mind. Now it would never happen. Now he'd never go home.

He regretted that he hadn't stayed in Republic City when he'd had the chance. He'd told Lin only half the story believing that he’d be able to clarify things later, but now that chance would never come. If he died here, he'd die with all the information he'd meant to convey to her, information that might've helped her to bring the Society down.

            Mako gave up.

            He sat there in the dark, curled in his corner and staring at the mound of flesh that had once been his protégé, and waited for death to come.

            When he heard a vague yelling, he thought he was imagining things. He thought maybe his mind was starting to go. It faded back out and left him in silence. But then there came footsteps along with it, more yelling. A girl screamed, terrified, and another called something that he couldn't hear over the first one’s screaming. Then there was a strange silence, a silence that seemed to hang in the air forever yet passed by in only a few seconds, and then there came the sounds of earthbending and a weird, dull light bounced off the wall.

            So, a few of them had survived.

            It was strange how things happened after that. The girls' voices screamed out again, this time in horror, and then there was a male voice that sounded so familiar it set a cold shock through Mako's stomach and drew him to stunned attention. It had sounded like Bolin, but Bolin's voice had never sounded so vicious. It had sounded remarkably like Bolin, but Bolin was dead.

            There came the barbaric scream, the crash of earth rising from the ground, and a deafening crack. Then, before Mako could even think to rise and rush to the doors to stare, he heard an explosion. It had happened in a second, all the noises and the sounds of bending, and a heartbeat later a body came skidding into view in a flash of green and black and red. It plowed straight into Yaozhu's corpse with a disgusting squish, and didn’t move again.

            Mako stared, dumbfounded at what he was certain was another dead body. But he couldn't see it. It had landed with its back to him, its forehead against the floor. It had landed in a crumpled, disgusting heap.

            He became even more dumbfounded when Asami threw herself to the ground, oblivious and frantic, and started tending to it.

            Asami?

            What?

_Asami?_

_What?_

            "What did you do?" The first girl's voice was squeaking. "What did you do?"

            Mako couldn't bring himself to say anything at all. He couldn't force anything past the weird, astounded lump in his throat. He could scarcely breathe. He was certain that he was dreaming. He was certain that he'd gone delirious. There was no way she could be there. He was imagining it. The light was too dim for him to see properly. It was someone else.

            The body he'd thought was dead started to move, pushed itself up with a distinct tremble as though its arms would give out, and held itself aloft for a few seconds before dropping its face weakly back to the ground. This confused Mako even more. If this was the man who'd yelled in the hall, it was astounding. He'd had sounded like Bolin and now that Mako could see his face, he _looked_ like Bolin, but Bolin was dead. It couldn't have been him. He'd sounded weird. He _looked_ weird. There wasn't enough _person_ there for it to be Bolin.

            The weird Asami-esque woman laid her hands on the weird Bolin-esque man and lowered her face down to gain a look at his face, but before she could do a thing it seemed that she suddenly recognized something. Her eyes fell on Yaozhu, and her face screwed up in disgust and horror. Then her eyes traced the wall upward, and as Mako stared at her, her gaze fell on him, and her eyes went wide.

            "Bo," she said, and she pointed a trembling finger at the cell. "Opal!"

 _What?_ She couldn't have said what he thought she'd said. She couldn't have. It was impossible. It was weird coincidence. No way they were actually who he thought. It was wishful thinking. It was delirium.

            But then a girl that looked strangely like Opal rushed into Mako’s field of view, and the same way as the girl who looked strangely like Asami, she stopped and stared at Yaozhu, then she stared at Mako. The man on the floor looked up at her and hung there motionless for a few long seconds before moving again. He pushed himself up and the second his eyes fell on Yaozhu he bolted back into Asami's legs, knocking her to the ground. Then he looked up, and Mako's stomach dropped out.

            There was no way.

            There was absolutely no way.

            It was Bolin, but it wasn't Bolin. It had to be him but it couldn't have been. There was too much about him that didn't fit. He wasn't big enough. He wasn't scrawny by any measure, but he wasn't half as powerfully built as Bolin had been. There wasn't enough definition. He was too lean. And the voice hadn't been right. That cry hadn't been right. But the eyes were right, and the look on his face was right, and the fact that he was running around with people who looked and sounded exactly like Opal and Asami was right.

            It had to be him.

            It couldn't be him.

            He was dead.

            All at once the figure sprang to its feet and ripped an enormous hole in the wall of his cell, but Mako couldn't move. He couldn't do anything. He could only listen while words fell out of this weird person's mouth in his dead brother's voice in tones entirely too harsh to have been Bolin's. He didn't even recognize what he was saying.

            "Do you know how to get out of here?"

            Mako stared dumbly. The voice was so familiar, but it couldn't be. It couldn't be Bolin. The way his face shifted between stunned surprise and anger was too weird. It was unnatural. It couldn't be Bolin because the way this person was acting was in no way similar to the way Bolin would've acted.

            "Can you navigate the tunnels or not?"

            The tone startled Mako into nodding. Sure, he could probably navigate them. He could probably lead them out. He'd watched Guan come and go, and he always came and went from the same direction. Certainly, Mako could follow the trail.

            "You get him out of here right now and wait at the bison."

            It was so weird. There was so much anger.

            "...If things start looking bad, you leave. Do you understand me?"

            No one said a word.

            "Do you understand me?"

            The person that couldn't be Bolin had practically screamed the words, and the girls nodded. Then he said something else in a low, icy voice that Mako couldn’t understand, and he bolted off down the corridor.

            "Where are you going?"

            "Someone's got to help Korra!"

            Mako snapped to reality. There could be no coincidence. There was only one Korra. These were the people he knew and loved. The Asami-esque girl was Asami, and the Opal-esque girl was Opal, and the Bolin-esque man was...

            ...It couldn't be. Bolin was dead. It had been verified. Toru had verified it all. He'd been crushed to death in the collapse of a building weeks ago. And besides, the person who'd been standing in front of him was too small. The resemblance had been there. The height and body shape and eyes and everything Mako remembered about Bolin had been there, but it was like everything had been skewed. Everything was scaled down. He'd sounded so strange. He'd sounded so angry and so commanding.

            It was unreal.

            Opal made to rush down the corridor but Asami caught her by the shoulders and held her firmly in place while Opal cried, "Bolin! Come back! Come back! Bolin!"

            Asami shook Opal roughly by the shoulders to gain her attention. "Listen," Asami commanded crisply, and Opal's eyes went wide and watery. "Yelling at him and crying isn't going to bring him back. He's going to do what he wants whether or not we agree with it. Do you understand? There is _nothing_ you or I can do that'll bring him back. You and I both know that."

            Opal sniffled, but nodded all the same.

            "Now," Asami continued, softer, "I can only deal with one crisis at a time and I need your help. Will you help me?"

            Again, Opal nodded.

            "Good."

            All at once Asami rushed through the hole in the wall and threw herself down at Mako's side, and he watched her do it with the same disbelieving look he'd had the entire time. Opal followed her, rubbing at her eyes and shaking with the occasional sob. She sniffled a lot.

            "I'm so glad you're safe," Asami said, and she threw her arms around Mako's shoulders and squeezed him so hard that it hurt to breathe. "I'm so, so glad we found you." Asami pulled away and turned Mako's face toward her. She looked concerned now, and she scrutinized him entirely too closely for his liking. "You look okay," she said after a few moments too many. "Can you stand up? Can you walk? Are you hurt?"

            Mako shook his head then looked out of the door to the cell at the dimly lit hallway. "That... That was Bolin," he said with a disbelieving stammer.

            "Yeah, it was," Asami replied. "Opal, give me a hand here."

            Together the girls hooked Mako's arms around their shoulders and helped him to stand, but Mako kept staring into the hall, flabbergasted. He didn't resist them.

            "Bolin isn't dead?" Mako asked dumbly.

            "Not for lack of trying," Asami said dryly, and when Mako looked between the girls Asami looked angry and Opal looked fit to burst into tears all over again.

            They led him into the hall, and Mako looked around. He'd imagined that he was going to have trouble keeping his eyes off Yaozhu, but in the end, that wasn't the problem. In the end, his attention was caught by the stone block that had risen in the middle of the hallway, covered in gore.

            "What..." Mako stammered. "Who..."

            "We can't discuss it now," Asami said. She sounded a little sick beneath the command. "We have to get out of here before someone else finds us. Now, can you lead us out?"

            Everything after that happened so quickly that for Mako, it seemed a blur. They followed the corridor the same way he'd seen Guan come and go, and eventually he managed to lead them out of the tunnels. He didn't know exactly how he'd done it, he'd been too stunned by Asami's verification that Bolin was, in fact, alive. He'd been too stunned by the implication of the bloody rock in the hallway. His mind had ground to a standstill with all the information that suddenly clicked into place and all the questions that followed.

            Mako didn't ask them. He understood the priorities well enough to know that it wasn't the right time. Still, there was no denying the nervous rumbling at the bottom of his stomach that roiled every time he thought about how weird Bolin had looked and how weird Bolin had sounded and how he was the only person that could've raised that rock in the hall.

            When the three exited the tunnels into the predawn light, Mako insisted that the girls let him go, that he could carry his own weight. He'd been working in his cell too hard to be carried now. It took some convincing, but eventually they let his arms drop, and even though he wobbled a little bit, he set off into the streets.

            "Where do we need to go?" Mako asked, attempting to match Asami's no-nonsense tone. "Where's the bison?"

            "To the southeast," Opal said. It seemed that she had regained her composure now, and when she pointed toward the enormous rising peak in the distance her hand was steady. "There's a clearing."

            Mako slowed and nodded. If that was the case, the safest way to get out would be to go the long way, to get them out of the boundaries of the city as quickly and quietly as possible, then skirt around the outside and across the base of the mountain. The only problem was that Mako had never gone that way.

            With a quick glance around to gain his bearings, Mako set off to the west, and despite their initial argument, Opal and Asami followed.

            They breached the boundary of Fire Fountain City without incident, and Mako wasn't sure if he should consider that lucky. Obviously, the soldiers had been distracted. As they'd walked he'd heard explosions, the sounds of combustion and firebending. Then he heard screaming, and it hadn't been the screams of command or instruction, it had been screams of terror and pain. Then the screams died for a long while, until Mako and the girls had maneuvered to the southern corner of the city, but then it started back up again more intense and terrifying than it had been before.

            As they ascended the foothills of the mountain, Mako gazed in wonder back at the city. It looked so different from the outside, so small and dilapidated. It looked exactly as he would've imagined a ghost town to look, except he knew that the place was fully occupied and had been for a while.

            Stranger still was the light. Though the sun was rising, the north sky was dark and cloudy, and down below Mako could see flashes of bright red-orange light springing up between buildings and in alleyways. He might've thought it to be firebending, but fire burned out. If it was firebending, there would've been a flash and the darkness again, but this light lingered, and instead of dimming over time it seemed to brighten until the buildings touched by the light began to catch fire and burn.

            Still, the light stayed.

            Mako found it strange how quiet the girls remained during all of this. He wondered what they were thinking about, how they'd known where to find him, how they'd managed to get into the city. But he dared not ask. Neither of them looked prepared to speak: Asami's jaw was set firm and her eyes had gone narrow with focus, and Opal's face had turned ashen. She looked ready to faint. Mako didn't know if she was tired or if it was the distant screaming that had done it to her.

            At last, Asami grabbed Mako's hand and picked up her pace, and within a few more minutes she rushed between two tall rocky hills and into a clearing where Oogi lay sleeping and snoring gently. The three of them scrambled into the basket, and Mako watched back down the mountain.

            "Sit down," Asami said to him. "Sit down, let's take care of you."

            "We have to go back," Mako said. "If Korra and Bolin are down there we have to go back!"

            "No," Asami said. "We're not going back. Now sit down and let me take a look at you."

            Mako sat down and Asami sat in front of him. A sick feeling bloomed in his stomach as she started fiddling with his jacket and his sleeves and poking all over him. Very shortly it grew to be too much, and he gently slapped her hand away.

            "Why aren't we going to help them?" Mako said.

            "Because there's nothing we can do," Asami replied coolly.

            "You don't know that," Mako argued. "Going down there would give us numbers. We'd be able to--"

            "No," Asami snapped. "We're not going. If we go down there it's entirely possible that your brother will get all of us killed."

            "What?"

            Asami stopped poking at him and let her hands fall limp in her lap, and she watched her knees and fidgeted like she was about to say something. Her brow furrowed and she opened her mouth once as if to speak, but then she closed it again and sighed.

            She never had the chance to speak. The silence was cut through by the sound of scrambling. Asami stood and Mako stood behind her, and before he knew what happened, Korra bolted through the break in the hills. She didn't look good. She looked afraid, dirt stained, and tired beyond reckoning. She looked like she'd been awake for days.

            "Help me!" Korra cried, and she jumped up on Oogi's leg at the same time Asami dove down to grasp her arm.

            Mako would've helped, too, but his attention was drawn back to movement in the space between the hills. Before he knew what had happened--before he recognized the firebender on Korra's heels--another chilling roar came from beyond the clearing. The firebender stopped, turned, and before Mako could register what had happened, fell face-first to the ground.

            Bolin darted at full sprint through the break in the hills and throttled himself into Oogi's basket. He landed hard. He landed _really_ hard, and he fell clumsily to his knees before yelling at them frantically to go.

            Suddenly Mako understood that among all the strange and disturbing things he'd seen, Yaozhu included, nothing could ever have prepared him for the sight of his brother, if the person who'd landed in the basket could really be called _his brother_. The filth had rendered him almost wholly unrecognizable, and the way he sat there panting on all fours was wholly uncharacteristic. Bolin never got winded. He could run for days.

            Mako couldn't bring himself to say a word, not even when the chaos seemed to have ended and Korra and Asami spoke in hushed, harsh whispers to each other and Opal started fussing about in the baggage strapped to the basket. He couldn’t say anything when Bolin stood and gazed back out at the city. All Mako could do was watch, helpless, and wonder exactly what had happened in the time he'd been gone.

Weirder still was the way Korra stood and walked to Bolin's side, the way she touched him and the way she spoke to him so softly that Mako couldn't hear it. It was an intimate touch. It was a loving touch. It was a touch that Mako had never seen the two of them share before.

            Then the quiet broke and Mako watched the expression on Bolin's face shift from confusion to dread to panic. And then he started yelling.

            Mako looked between Asami and Opal, who were looking between each other. Even if he wanted to, Mako couldn't have brought himself to stand and intervene. He couldn't look away, yet the spectacle had him so perturbed that he couldn't move, either. All he could do was sit and watch Korra straining against Bolin's panicked strength, working to keep him controlled and saying words to him that Mako knew he wasn't hearing.

            The trance broke when Bolin swayed and fell, and the only thing that kept Mako from jumping to his feet was Opal's hand firmly planted against his chest. When he looked at her, she shook her head and said sadly, "There's nothing you can do."

            Mako sat and watched, his body awash with fear and disbelief and a weird dreadful numbness. It was the same numbness he'd felt when Toru told him Bolin was dead, except now Bolin was there, and even though he was very much alive, it didn't seem to Mako that he'd last very much longer.

            When Korra yelled for Asami, the tone in her voice set a shiver down Mako's spine. It made his hair stand on end. Her voice contained a quality that he'd never heard come out of her before, a quality that he never imagined her capable of producing. Her voice quivered so hard that Mako could barely understand the word, and when Asami cried desperately, "What _is_ that?" and Korra said that she didn't know, everything seemed to stop again.

            Bolin had gone eerily calm. He'd stopped yelling, had folded himself double with his face pressed into Korra's legs. Everything about him suggested he was still awake, from the heaving of his back to the trembling of his hands clasped around the back of his head, but he didn't make a sound. He didn't do anything at all.

            "What is it?" Asami asked again, and Mako could see her forcing her hands into Bolin's tightly wound ball.

            Korra shook her head. "Something's wrong."

            "Did he say anything?"

            "No! He barely said a word after he found me. He... We fell through the floor and he didn't wake up for a while, and after he came around and we started moving again he fell down a couple of times."

            "And you didn't notice anything wrong?" Asami seemed incredulous. She seemed angry.

            Korra stared at Asami, her eyes narrowed and her brow furrowed. "Yeah, I noticed a _lot_ that was wrong," she said brusquely.

            Asami's eyes narrowed, too. "You know what I mean. You two were together for hours, and he was falling down and you didn’t stop to check?"

            "Yeah, sorry I didn’t do triage. I was kind of busy being chased by a bunch of crazy firebenders and trying not to die!" Korra cried.

            The two fell silent and Mako could feel the tension between them. It was a tension that hadn't been there before he'd left, a tension that seemed impossible between the two. The anger was obvious, yes, but there was something deeper there. Was it resentment?

            He looked to Opal for some kind of guidance, but she'd busied herself digging through a bag from which she produced a towel and a bottle. She didn't look up at all. It seemed to Mako as though she was pretending the whole thing wasn't happening. It was like she was pretending that everything was okay.

            "Opal," Mako said quietly, and she looked at him wide eyed, "what's going on?"

            She shook her head and looked back down, set back to work with her towel. Figuring she would be of no help at all, Mako looked back to Asami and Korra, but it seemed they would be no help, either. They'd ceased talking to each other entirely, and while Asami sat there as though waiting for something to react to, Korra had bent low, her forehead on Bolin's shoulder. He could see her mouth moving like she was whispering something to him, but there could be no telling what it was.

            Mako jumped when Opal touched him. He jumped so hard that he fell straight over, and when he glared up at her she looked genuinely hurt.

            "I was just trying to clean you up," she said timidly. "I was just trying to help."

            Mako sat up, glared between Opal and Korra and Asami, and then jumped to his feet. "Hey!" he shouted, and all the girls looked straight at him. Bolin didn't move. "Someone want to take five seconds here and tell me what the fuck is going on? How did you find me? What's wrong with him?" He jammed his finger toward Bolin angrily. "A few hours ago, he was dead! He’s supposed to be dead! And now he's here and... I want to know what's wrong with my little brother!"

            Asami stood up and patted her hands placatingly in the air. "Calm down."

            "No! I want to know what's happening, and I want to know right now!"

            "We don't know."

            Asami's flat response stole all Mako's bluster away, and he sagged a bit, deflated. "Then what... How? Why is he..."

            "Sit down," Asami said. "Korra has him under control, we can talk." Then Asami paused and looked down at Opal. "Opal, I need you to find us a place to put down. A place with fresh water. Can you do that?"

            Opal nodded and dropped her things. Mako could hear her sniffling as she walked away.

            Mako sat, but he didn't look at Asami. He kept his eyes locked on Korra and Bolin across the way. Korra was still bent low over Bolin's shoulders, her hands on his arms. Her mouth was still moving, her thumbs stroking absently at his shoulders. It was weird. It wasn't like them to sit like that. It wasn't like Korra to sit like that with anyone.

            "Lin told us where you were," Asami said as she sat. "We arranged to come here from Zaofu and landed on Baihe Island yesterday."

            "From Zaofu?"

            Asami nodded, and Mako looked at her, confused. He didn't flinch when Asami took up Opal's towel and started dabbing at his face. "We were in Zaofu. Korra, Opal, and I went to investigate the Boiling Rock per the note we received from you, and when we came back home, Republic City wasn't safe for us. We left for Zaofu to regroup and figure out what came next. Bolin was already there and..."

            "Why was he there? Wh..." Mako shook his head and looked at his knees. "Let's start there. What's wrong with him?"

            "Right now? Something's wrong in his chest but I don't know what it is. Korra doesn't know what it is. It could be anything, and it wouldn't be the first time he's had problems like that. A couple weeks ago he grabbed his chest and fainted and laid there with a heart rate below forty for like, two or three hours. If this is anything like that, there's nothing we can do but wait for it to go away and hope for the best."

            Mako started to stammer, but Asami held up her hand and he quieted again.

            "He's been sick," Asami said, and she looked down and sighed. "It's a long story, but the easiest way to put it is that he's been really, really sick. He was in Zaofu to recover. Su took him back to make sure he stayed focused."

            "Sick how?"

            Asami shook her head. "In every way you could possibly imagine and then some."

            Mako didn't know what to say to that, but he knew that if Asami felt comfortable giving a direct answer she would've given it. "How did you find me?"

            Again, Asami shook her head. "Dumb luck. There's no better way to explain it. Bo and Opal and I were being chased down by some firebenders and wound up in your tunnel."

            "Oh."

            "Are you hurt?"

            Now it was Mako's turn to shake his head. "Tired," he said, "and hungry. Really, really hungry."

            "We'll set down soon and get you something," Asami said, and she offered a weak smile. "I'm just glad you're back with us."

            Mako was glad, too, even if everything was falling apart.

 

*****

 

            By the time Oogi touched down on a small plot of green, the sun had risen high and Korra's legs had fallen asleep. She dared not move once Bolin had calmed enough to simply lay there, and even when Asami declared that it was safe to disembark and that there was a shallow river nearby that they could use for drinking and cleaning, she stayed still.

            In all truth, Korra wasn't ready to disembark. She hadn't been ready for most of the events of the last day, and she knew that getting off the bison would mean questions from Mako and Opal and Asami, and there was no way Korra was prepared to address even the simplest inquiry.

            How was she supposed to explain everything? How could she possibly convey what kinds of awful things had happened in the time that Mako had been gone and how it had all culminated last night when Bolin had gone on a horrible, bloody rampage that left uncounted people dead and an entire city inundated with lava? How could she explain to Opal and Asami how Bolin had found her and dragged her through the streets of Fire Fountain City lobbing molten rock at anyone unlucky enough to cross his path. How could she explain his accuracy? How could she explain his ruthlessness?

            Worse, she would be expected to explain what had happened to him afterward. She didn't even know what had happened. His heart had been beating funny and he'd fainted and fallen and shivered and panicked, and it had taken a long, long, long time for everything to fall back in line.

            Korra wasn't sure that everything _had_ fallen back in line. She'd had her hands on Bolin's back the whole time, feeling the weird skips and drums, waiting for his heart to stop or for him to stop breathing or for something otherwise horrible to happen. But over time and with Korra's gentle coaching, Bolin calmed and his breathing slowed and the irregularities she felt came more and more infrequently. In the end, everything felt too slow and Korra wondered if what was happening now was the same thing that had happened the night he'd broken down with Suyin, when he'd fainted and seemed unable to come back around.

            Bolin hadn't said a word since before he'd fallen the first time, when all he seemed to be able to say was, “No.” But he responded to Korra's voice clearly enough. When she told him to breathe, he breathed, and when she told him to relax, he tried. But he didn't talk and he didn't raise his head even after everyone else had disembarked and Korra reassured him that they were well enough alone.

            Korra didn't mind that he didn't look at her. She wasn't sure that she was ready to see his face. Now that the sun had come out, it was more than Korra could handle to see the rest of him all covered in mud and blood and flesh and filth. Only tiny patches of skin showed through where drops of sweat had washed the dirt away, and other than that the only thing that Korra could really see was the disgusting wound that stretched from the end of his metal bracer all the way up to his right shoulder. She'd known it had been there but hadn't realized just how serious it was or how many tiny rocks had lodged in the skin. And now he was on his knees in front of her, she understood that the damage hadn't been limited to his arm. It extended all the way down his leg from knee to ankle, and she imagined it had torn up the top of his bare foot, too.

            Odd he hadn't been limping.

            "Hey," she called quietly. Bolin didn't move, but she hadn't expected that he would. "We ought to go get you cleaned up. Will you come with me?"

            No response.

            Korra sighed and rubbed again at the back of Bolin's head. "Are you awake?"

            He nodded.

            "I promise you'll feel better if we get you cleaned up."

            He shook his head.

            "I'm not going to play nice like Su plays nice with you," Korra said firmly. "You know by now I'm going to give it to you straight."

            He nodded.

            "Then listen." Korra sighed. She never stopped stroking the back of his head, but she made certain her voice stayed firm. "You and I both know what happened. There's no getting around it and there's no taking it back. I saw everything you did last night."

            "Not everything."

            Korra stopped, startled. Bolin had sounded sicker than ever, and she wasn't sure she wanted to know exactly what he meant. "I saw enough," she continued in the same tone. "And here's the deal: I don't care. I mean, I do care, but I want to help you, and the first thing we need to do is get you cleaned up so I can figure out what needs immediate attention and what we can leave alone and how bad off you are. Do you understand? We need to get you out of those filthy torn up clothes and into something clean. We need to take care of your arm before it gets infected, and we can't do that if it's stuck all over with rocks."

            "I'm not supposed to be here."

            "Doesn't matter. You're here and you're going to deal with it. Now sit up and let me look at you."

            Korra steeled herself as Bolin began to shift, and he very slowly lifted his head from her lap. He didn't raise his eyes. Instead, he kept them locked on Korra's knees and folded his hands sheepishly in his lap.

            He looked empty. He looked weak. He looked tired. He looked the way he'd looked when he'd threatened to find a roof to dive off of, and Korra knew he must be thinking along those lines all over again. "Come on," Korra sighed. "Let's go."

            It surprised Korra how long it took Bolin to stand up and how unsteady he seemed on his feet. Despite his efforts to convince her otherwise, it seemed he could scarcely walk, and the limp she'd missed the night prior had come on with vengeance. She hooked her arm around his elbow and together they walked to the river.

            It was more of a stream, if Korra was to judge, barely ten feet across and so shallow that she could see smooth shining rocks poking through the surface, but it would do. Any water was better than none.

            For a while Bolin stood there idly staring at the water, even when Korra knelt to draw it to her face. And on one hand she didn't want to push him, but on the other she wanted to evaluate the damage. To her relief, all it took was a narrow-eyed glance from her for Bolin to move again, and he pulled off his bracers and shirt, slumped to the ground beside her, and leaned over the gently rolling surface of the stream with a grimace. He groped absently at his ribs and stared at his reflection in the water for a long time.

            At first, everything seemed reasonable. Bolin seemed to follow Korra's lead: He dipped his hands into the water and brought it to his face, then his arms, then his chest, and he repeated each step slowly and meticulously. Korra paused in her own bathing to watch, and Bolin seemed so focused on himself that he didn't notice that she'd stopped or that she'd taken on a look of disgust at the way the grime washed away.

            The stuff was stubborn. It didn't clean easily, and when it did, it scraped off in thick, chunky sloughs that dyed the slow-running water a sick shade of brownish red. When he dipped his hands beneath the surface to splash the water back onto his arms, swirls of color twisted around his wrists and washed away, and Bolin seemed just as focused on that as he was on the actual cleaning.

            Korra watched intently as the expression on Bolin's face began slowly to shift, as his brow angled and his eyes narrowed and the rubbing at his arms and wrists and hands grew ever more frantic, until it seemed that he was scrubbing with little regard for his injuries or whether his skin had come clean at all. Then the scrubbing turned to scratching and Bolin's look of grim determination changed to a look of carefully suppressed panic.

            "What are you doing?" Korra asked gently. She didn't move to stop him. She wanted to understand instead of blindly intervening. Every time they blindly intervened in Bolin's breakdowns it seemed to make things worse. She wanted to understand.

            Bolin didn't say anything, though. He shook his head and kept scratching.

            "Bolin," Korra said, a little louder this time, "what are you doing? Why are you doing that?"

            He shook his head and squinted his eyes closed but didn't stop the scratching. His arms had gone red and raw and the wound on his right had started weeping clear fluid around its edges. The places he'd scratched the most had begun to bleed freely again, but Bolin kept splashing and scratching and splashing and scratching until the motion became so frenzied that Korra grabbed his wrists and stopped him by force.

            He didn't look at her. He didn't open his eyes at all, and it scared her. All Bolin did was shake his head and maintain the pained, panicked look he'd worn the whole time, the look he took on every time he recognized that something had gone wrong. Then, in a thick, shuddering voice he said, "It won't come off. I can't get it off."

            Delirious. He must have been delirious. Before he'd started the weird, ferocious scratching he'd gotten himself cleaner than Korra had imagined he would considering the degree of grime caking every part of him.

            "It's coming off," Korra said. "Look."

            Bolin shook his head again, and Korra could feel the panicked, uncontrolled constricting of the muscles in his arms the same way she'd felt it before. He looked ready to cry, but didn't. She could tell he was struggling to keep his composure.

            "It won't come off," he said, "it won't come off. It'll never come off. I can't get it off. It won't come off. It's never going to come off."

            As Bolin repeated the words his voice grew more frenzied. With each repetition, the confusion and madness seemed to increase until he sounded the same way he had when he'd realized that he'd not been dreaming, when all he could say was, "No, no, no," and            double over in uncontrollable horror and panic.

"Do you trust me?" Korra asked. "Bolin, do you trust me?"

            He nodded, but he didn't open his eyes.

            "Then let me clean you up. Can you do that? Will you trust me to get it off?"

            He nodded.

            Though he couldn't see it, Korra nodded, too, and she set to work.

            Bolin curled up again, his knees drawn to his chest, and every time Korra touched him he jerked reflexively away then relaxed, then jerked away again when she splashed more water on him. He kept his eyes low and his jaw clenched, and the only noise he made was the slightest whimper when Korra touched the wound on his arm and leg and a genuine, sickly cry when her hand brushed the bruise on his side.

            The quiet made Korra uncomfortable, and that made her feel guilty. After a night of bending and yelling and listening to people scream and cry, she imagined that the quiet would be welcome, but it wasn't. Maybe it was because it was Bolin who was being quiet, because even in the worst situations he'd never stopped communicating, and now that he'd shut up everything seemed eerie. He'd kept Korra moving with his occasionally less-than-gentle leading. He'd seemed indomitable and confident so that she was certain that she'd never have gotten out of Fire Fountain City if it hadn't been for his pushing.

            And that was the worst part. Had it not been for Bolin, Korra knew she wouldn't have gotten out alive. When he'd found her, she'd been tired and afraid and completely lost, barely capable of defending herself, and though Bolin had been just as tired and just as afraid and just as lost, he'd maintained enough focus and determination to ignore it all and move forward no matter what it took. Among all of them, Bolin was the only one bold enough to take the steps that needed to be taken to get everyone out safely. He'd been the only one able to ignore all the chaos and do what needed to be done.

            Eventually Korra resigned herself to the idea that she'd never be able to clean Bolin as thoroughly as he or she wanted. Without a shower and soap and a serious scrubbing, the caked-on dirt and blood simply wouldn't rinse away. It had dried in every crease and fold on his arms and hands, on his chest and his neck, and the way he flinched every time she went to touch his face put it off limits. But she managed to slow the bleeding and weeping on his arm, to pry out some of the rocks, and she carefully scraped away as much of the evidence that he'd injured or killed anyone as she could. In the end he just looked dirty, and for Korra, dirty was good enough.

            After a time spent sitting in silence, Korra helped Bolin to his feet, and she snatched his clothes away from him when he tried to put them back on. she didn't say anything; she hoped that the glare she shot him would convey her message clearly enough. The silence stayed until after they'd arrived back at the camp where Opal, Asami, and Mako sat around what would eventually be their evening fire, where Mako was ravenously stuffing his face with what looked to be their entire supply of food. Had the situation been any less dire, Korra might have laughed at how absurd he looked.

            "What happened?"

            Korra and Bolin stopped dead when Opal shouted at them, and Korra recognized her mistake at once. Before she could react, all three of them were staring straight at Bolin's bruised side, and even as Asami started trying to placate them, Opal jumped up and rushed forward. Mako seemed ready to rush toward them as well, but Asami grabbed his arm and held him steady.

            "What happened to you?" Opal cried, and she skidded to a halt at Bolin's front. Without a moment's hesitation she touched him, pressed her hands against the bruise, and leaned down to eye it more closely. He watched her for a second and Korra saw him grimace and twitch when Opal ran her hand over his ribs, like he'd been ready to double over but had forced himself to stay upright. A tiny noise came out of him.

            "What on earth happened?" Opal cried again, but when she looked up at him and he stared stone-faced back, her expression dropped.

            " _You_ happened."

            Bolin wrenched himself away from Opal and snatched his clothes from Korra's hands, then turned and made his way carefully back toward Oogi's basket. He disappeared, and left the rest in awkward silence.

            Opal looked misty-eyed again, and it struck Korra as a little funny how all she seemed to do any more was cry. All the same, Opal slunk back to the unlit fire pit and sank to her knees, where she folded her hands in her lap and stared at the ground, her shoulders occasionally shuddering. Korra didn't know why she felt so judgmental: Opal had every reason to cry.

            Mako swallowed hard. "What was that?"

            Korra shook her head. She didn't want to address the issue right now. There would be no way to explain everything in a way that would do it justice. There was nothing she could say that wouldn't generate more questions. There just wasn't enough time to be thorough. Instead, she turned to Asami and changed the subject as quickly as possible.

            "Do you have anything that he can eat?"

            Asami nodded. "Should be something up in his gear. Su said she packed enough to last the whole trip."

            With a sigh, Korra shrugged. "Well, he'll have plenty then. I don't think he's eaten since we left."

            "What are you talking about?"

            Korra and Asami both looked at Mako, and then Asami looked at Korra, but Korra didn’t answer. She just shook her head and turned away. Explanations could wait. There were more pressing matters to tend to.

            "Don't wait on me to have dinner," Korra said. "Figure out what we're going to do, whether we're going to Republic City or back to Zaofu, and I'll make sure he's okay." She jerked her head toward the basket. "My only request is that we rest tonight, then head out first thing in the morning and don't stop again unless we absolutely have to. I don't want to set down again unless Oogi is falling out of the sky."

            Before anyone could protest or ask more questions, Korra walked away.

            Bolin had taken his customary spot at the back of Oogi's basket, had discarded his clothes in the corner nearest the tied-down baggage, and presently reclined weakly with his arm draped over his middle, his hand grasping gently at the bruise. He didn't say anything when Korra approached or when she began rifling through his belongings. He didn't argue when she threw his heavy brown jacket at him or when she pulled three sizeable, opaque bottles from his bags.

            Korra dragged her own bag from the pile, dropped down at Bolin's side, and thrust one of the bottles at him.

            "Eat."

            He took it, but he didn't say anything and he didn't open it. He didn't move at all.

            Korra wasn't about to argue with him. She set about bandaging his wounded arm, wrapping it gently and wordlessly before moving on to his leg and his foot. He watched her the whole while with an interest that made her uncomfortable, so that by the time she'd finished the task, Korra felt very warm with what might have been embarrassment.

            "What do you want me to do about your ribs?"

            Bolin didn't say a word. He shook his head.

            "Fine. Put on your shirt and eat, but we’re having that looked at first thing when we get home."

            Bolin pulled on his jacket with a wince and a breathy grunt. Then he folded his hands on his knees and dropped his eyes low. "I'm sorry," he said at last, and his voice had been soft and weak. He held out the unopened bottle that Korra had given him, and when she didn't take it, he shook it gently at her. "I'm just not hungry."

            "When was the last time you ate?" Korra asked firmly.

            Bolin shrugged. "Don't know. Don't see how it matters, either. I just want to sleep."

            He'd sounded so defeated that Korra couldn't stomach the thought of berating him, so she took the bottle, tucked it into her bag with the others, and zipped it back up.

            "Will you stay with me?"

            Startled, Korra looked up. "What?"

            With a great sigh, Bolin dropped his forehead into his hands. "Will you stay with me? While I sleep?"

            Korra didn't know what she could say other than, "Okay." And before she could settle into a more comfortable position, Bolin shifted. He turned and laid down, dropped his head onto her lap, and wrapped his arms around her back as though she was a gigantic, vertically aligned pillow. It was weird to feel his breathing on her stomach, to feel the weakness in his hands and the vague trembling in the rest of him. He'd done such a good job making himself appear whole in front of the others that Korra couldn't be surprised it had tired him out. 

            "If I freak out, wake me up," Bolin said.

            "Yeah," Korra said, "I'll do that."

            She didn't have to worry about that, though. Bolin was asleep within minutes, and once he'd gone there came a comforting, calming shift: He stopped shivering and his hands slackened, and his breathing slowed and warmed her middle in gentle swells. Every time she glanced down at him the flutter erupted in her stomach and in her chest, and Korra hated herself a little bit for it.

            He'd just gotten done killing people. She'd watched it happen up close and in full relief, and in the moment it had been horrifying. _Bolin_ had been horrifying. Korra had never seen a person look so angry and determined in her life, and in her wildest imagination she'd never have put that kind of look on Bolin.

            But now he was different. He'd been different for a long time, since he'd waked from the collapse, and he seemed to change with the wind. The calm now was strange, and Korra couldn't even say that it was because she'd never seen Bolin sleep before. She'd seen him sleep many, many times, but his touch had never hit her in the pit of her stomach the same way it was doing now. He'd never slept _on_ her, and he'd never held her around the back the way he was now and he'd never pressed his forehead into her stomach or curled against her so closely.

            She never imagined that they'd be lying together like this, but now they were and now she was thinking about it, Korra came to a sudden understanding. Everyone had asked her at one point or another if there was something happening between her and Bolin, and both Opal and Asami had believed that there was something significant, or at least something significant enough to yell and hit and fight about. Korra had never been able to see it from their perspective, not until now, and she wasn't certain what exactly had clicked or why.

            Something had happened at some point that made Korra comfortable and trustworthy for Bolin. She didn't know what it was. She'd been rude to him and she'd screwed up his relationships and generally ruined what was left of his life, but in the end, that seemed not to matter. In the end, something had happened to draw them close, and perhaps it wasn't a romantic closeness, but it was certainly intimate. Something had happened that made them comfortable enough with each other that she could wash the blood and guts off him when he couldn't do it for himself, and he could drag her past certain death when she couldn't do it for herself.

            There _was_ something there that hadn't been there before, and Korra recognized now that she'd been too defensive to realize it. Every time Opal or Asami had confronted her on the matter, Korra's mind had jumped to the most extreme. She never considered it possible that she might be the only thing keeping Bolin afloat.

            Korra resigned herself to reality. She was stuck with him, and even if his very presence made her uncomfortable in every way it was possible to be uncomfortable, she had to stay. It didn't matter how much her stomach jumped and twisted when he looked at her or how sweaty her palms got when he touched her. She had to be there for him because no one else would. No one else could.

            Korra laid her head back and dropped her hands down into her lap, and she lay there for a while listening to the vague sounds of conversation between Mako, Opal, and Asami and rubbing her thumb absently about Bolin's forehead. She could've fallen asleep herself, but every time she considered allowing herself to drift she worried that if she did, she wouldn't be around to wake Bolin if he needed it. She didn’t dare let him suffer alone through the nightmares.

            She didn't notice when Mako climbed into the basket and sat in front of her. She didn't know how long he was sitting there before he said something, but when he gently cleared his throat and she startled awake to look at him, his brows were raised and his eyes were narrow and he seemed both skeptical and curious at the same time.

            "Hi," Korra said dumbly.

            "Hi."

            Korra didn't know what to say. The look on Mako's face made her feel like he'd caught her doing something awful. She wanted to say something like, "Welcome back," because that would be the appropriate thing to say, but it seemed a little flippant. She'd not seen Mako in such a long time that she didn't know what to say, and the situation was made many times more awkward by the fact that Bolin was sleeping on her lap.

            Korra sighed. "You've got questions."

            The eyebrow went up again. Mako's skepticism deepened as his eyes traced downward to see Korra's thumb still absently brushing against Bolin's head, to see her other hand idle on his shoulder. It made her very self-conscious.

            "Opal and Asami think we should go to Zaofu," Mako said flatly, drawing his eyes back up. "They say we should radio Beifong when we get there to get further instructions."

            "Probably a good idea," Korra replied flatly. "I bet we can shave a day off the trip if we cut to the south--"

            "What's going on here?"

            "What?"

            Mako threw his arms out, gesticulating to the area as a whole, and he looked to the left and to the right as if trying to spot something specific to point out. Finding nothing, he eyed Korra again, shot a quick glance at Bolin, and then looked up. "I mean exactly what I said. I've been asking questions since you guys found me and nobody is saying a word. I want some answers. So, let's start easy: What is _this?_ " He turned his palms out, motioning toward Bolin. "What... He… He's supposed to be _dead_."

            Korra shrugged. "Yeah, he probably should be."

            "And everyone keeps saying things like that but nobody will give it to me straight!"

            "Keep your voice down."

            Mako looked ready to burst, but he lowered his voice all the same. "I want to know what's going on here. Why are _you_ up here with him and not Opal? Why is he... What happened? When we set off from the island, what happened?"

            Korra shook her head, unsure where to start. "For the sake of time, I can tell you that Bolin was attacked by a combustion bender, a building came down on him, and he was hurt."

            The eyebrow again.

            Korra waved her hand dismissively, and when Mako's eyebrow lowered again she returned to rubbing Bolin's shoulder. "We thought for sure he was dead, but it turns out he's more stubborn than we thought. But..." she paused and looked down. It was like she'd choked on the words. With a deep, deep breath, she managed to say, "He's not the same."

            "...Not the same?"

            "Well, _look at him_."

            "Yeah, I see that."

            "The change isn't just physical."

            "Oh."

            Korra shook her head again. She didn't know how to explain it all.

            "So, what happened when we set off? He... He was crazy."

            "Yeah, that about covers it," Korra agreed. "He panics. He gets angry, then he gets scared, and then he panics. He can't control it. When it hits, all we can do is ride it out and hope."

            Mako's expression softened. It looked as though he was about to cry, but he didn't. He held firm and watched Bolin breathing and folded his hands in his lap. "I thought he was dead."

            "He thought you were dead."

            Mako shook his head. "I thought he was dead, and here I come back and..." He paused as if he'd forgotten what he was going to say, as if he'd thought twice about pressing on. "Why are you here instead of Opal? Why'd he talk to her like that down there?"

            Korra couldn't hold Mako's gaze. She dropped her eyes and squeezed Bolin's shoulder as if it would reassure her. "Well," she said slowly, "he and Opal... They're kind of done."

            "Kind of done?"

            "They're not really a thing anymore."

            When Korra glanced sheepishly up, Mako's jaw had slackened and his eyes had gone wide. She could practically hear the gears struggling to turn in his brain.

            "They had a falling out," Korra said, more firmly now. "They fought. That bruise you saw on him... That's from Opal. I'm pretty sure she broke something but he didn't tell anyone it was there until after we'd left Zaofu and by then it was too late to do anything.           And as far as him talking to her like that--I'm pretty sure that was the first time he's said anything to her since we left."

            "Why?" Mako asked. "Why did they... Have a falling out?"

            "Because of you."

            Korra regretted that she'd said the words at once. The lies they'd told Bolin about Mako had played a part in the breakup, sure, but that wasn't the only reason it had happened. It had happened because of her, because she'd been there the night he'd been attacked, because she'd been in the wrong place at the wrong time and he'd waked and thought she was Opal and set a terrible string of events into motion. It had happened because she'd been unable to articulate herself and admit to hard truths and work through her feelings, and she'd dragged everyone else down with her.

            For a few quiet moments, Korra wondered how things might've been different if she'd just come clean about the whole thing to begin with. She wondered how things would be different if she'd told the truth about what had happened when Bolin kissed her and admitted exactly how she'd felt about it instead of sitting on it and avoiding the problem until it got too big to handle. Maybe they could've worked through it. Maybe he and Opal would still be together, and maybe Korra and Asami would still be together. Maybe Team Avatar would be _a team_ again.

            "So, why are you up here then?"

            Korra shook her head. "I think this is a conversation that would be better had in Zaofu, when we've all had the chance to rest and recuperate and get ourselves figured out."

            Mako didn't seem pleased by the statement, but he didn't argue, either. His face fell flat and he watched Bolin sleep. It was interesting, in a way, to see him like this. It went without saying that Mako and Bolin loved each other dearly, but in Korra's experience it was rare for them to really express it. Their relationship had always been one of friendly banter and occasional argument and a lot of things unsaid.

            "He missed you," Korra said quietly. "He missed you a lot."

            Mako nodded.

            "I missed you, too. We all did. But Bo missed you more than anyone. He was so upset when we thought you'd died that he lost his bending."

            When Mako swallowed very hard Korra knew it was time to stop talking. He sat for a while longer, occasionally rubbing at his reddening eyes, and when he finally stood up he let go an obvious sniffle.

            "I'm going to go see about dinner," Mako said. Korra could tell he was working hard to keep his voice steady, and he'd done a very good job of it. She supposed that was the difference between the two brothers: Mako had always been reserved, but Bolin had never made any fuss about being emotional.

            Korra tried to smile and it felt like a poor effort. But Mako tried to return the gesture, and as he turned she could see him rubbing at his eyes again with the back of his wrist. Then he hopped down and out of sight.

 

*****

 

            Mako spent the whole of the trip back to Zaofu treading a precarious line between maintaining his stoicism and blubbering like a child. He spent the time sitting opposite Korra and Bolin in Oogi's basket, watching their interactions from a distance and wondering when they had become _a thing_. Korra hadn't said it outright, but the implication had certainly been there. More than that, the fact that he barely lifted his head from her lap and she never lifted her hands off of him spoke volumes.

            Very frequently and without warning Bolin gave in to strange movements, as though every muscle in his body flexed against his will all at once, and it took a long time for him to come back out of it. Often, he'd stay that way until Korra bent over him and wrapped her arms around his shoulders and spoke softly at him, but every time he came around, Bolin would spend a few seconds staring up at her before dropping his head back into her lap.

            The nights were the worst part. Bolin cried out and yelped and made all sorts of terrified noises, and it seemed that Korra never had the chance to sleep. Bolin ruined all their sleep, and on more than one occasion, Asami curled up beside Mako and the two of them sat in silence, watching Bolin squirm like a child and watching Korra try to get him back under control until eventually the nightmare passed and the quiet set in again.

            Over time, Mako came to understand that Korra's explanation of matters had been an oversimplification. Sure, Bolin and Opal may have had some kind of fight and she may even have given him the horrible black and purple bruise on his ribs, but she didn't hate him. The look on her face said that clearly enough. The way she cried quietly when she thought everyone else was asleep said it, too, and the look on her face whenever Korra comforted Bolin was as soul-crushing and desperate as any look Mako had ever seen before.

            Every relationship among every one of them seemed to have changed in the time that Mako had been away, and the longer he sat with them and the more he talked with them, the more he understood. None of the changes were particularly subtle. Asami and Korra still seemed to get along well enough, they spoke cordially and worked together when it was needed, but the romantic tension that had once existed between them seemed entirely gone. Korra and Opal spoke rarely, but Mako didn't need to wonder why. It was clear enough that Opal was either jealous or afraid of whatever weird relationship was kindling between Korra and Bolin. Opal and Asami spoke more together than anyone else on the whole trip, and while their conversations usually revolved around planning and dinner and where they might set down if they needed to camp, there was a strange closeness that Mako couldn't pinpoint. They worked together well but seemed still distant, like they were paired for security.

            More than anything, Mako wished that Bolin would say something. He wished that Bolin would stay awake and turn around and _talk_. From Korra's brief explanation, something drastic had happened to him, and the fact that Bolin hadn't eaten a thing or told a stupid joke or laughed or said anything at all went well beyond worrying. Bolin had uttered two sentences to Mako since they'd found him, and neither of them had been remotely Bolin-ish.

            A sick feeling came into Mako's stomach whenever he remembered the tone in Bolin's voice and the look on Bolin's face when he'd said those words, and when Mako considered everything else he'd seen, the sick feeling grew. Bolin had been filthy. He'd been beyond filthy. He'd been covered from head to foot in a disgusting mix of dirt and blood and what looked to be tiny pieces of ground up meat, and even when he and Korra had returned from their bath in the stream he'd still been dirty. Then there was the blood-stained rock in the corridor where Mako had been found. There were two people in Fire Fountain City capable of raising that rock, and Korra hadn't been anywhere nearby. That meant that Bolin had drawn that stone from the ground, and the blood on the rock meant that someone--multiple someones if the amount of blood was any indication--had been crushed.

            Then there had been the firebender that Korra had been fleeing from. Mako had recognized that firebender as one of Bingwei's friends, a commander who lived three doors down from him and who Mako had eaten dinner with on many occasions. Bolin had done _something_ to him, but Mako couldn't imagine what it was. Bolin had screamed that terrifying, barbaric scream and the firebender had turned around and _something_ had pierced through his neck and lodged in the stone directly behind where he'd been standing, but Mako had no idea what it was. All he knew was that the commander had wobbled for a split second after his throat had been pierced, and then he'd fallen flat on his face and not moved again.

            The amount of blood had been staggering, and every time Mako looked at his little brother writhing in horror he couldn’t help but wonder what other awful things Bolin was dreaming of. For Bolin to have been so thoroughly covered with blood and dirt, something must have happened beyond the crushing people in the corridor and the slaughtering of the commander. Mako was afraid to imagine what that something might have been.

            When Oogi touched down in Zaofu late on the third day a veritable army of people were waiting for them. Su stood at the front of the group, and when Mako disembarked she threw her arms around him and held him in a tight embrace until it came to be a little bit awkward. Then she said, "We're glad you're home," and smiled enormously at him.

            Sheepishly, Mako said, "Thanks."

            As Asami and Opal jumped down from Oogi's basket, she hugged them in the same way and welcomed them just as warmly. But once she'd let them go, she turned back to Mako, all business.

            "I've already had a guest room set up for you, the same one as usual, but I'd appreciate it if you'd go get checked out first to make sure you're okay."

            "I'm okay," Mako insisted.

            "I won't take no for an answer. Asami, Opal, please see that he gets to the clinic. I'll send someone in a while to get you all for a late dinner. You must be hungry."

            "Yeah. I'm hungry," Mako said skeptically, "but I really don't think I need to go anywhere. I think Bolin is the one--"

            "Bolin is with you?" Su said, a look of surprise on her face. "He... He came back?"

            "Why wouldn't he have come back?"

            "Where is he?"

            Mako shut up, stunned. The shift in Su's tone from happy, maternal welcome to mildly afraid had him confused. Mako pointed to Oogi's basket and Su gazed up at it, her brow furrowed and her jaw set.

            "Why wouldn't he have come back?" Mako asked again, but Su seemed to be ignoring him.

            Instead, Su patted Mako on the shoulder and smiled at him disarmingly. "We'll talk over dinner. For now, go get yourself cleaned up."

            She didn't say anything else before she set off toward the bison. As Opal and Asami ushered him away from the landing pad, Mako gazed back over his shoulder and contemplated fighting against their pull. The desire strengthened when he saw Su standing in Oogi's basket, her hands cupped over her mouth, and he jerked reflexively away from Asami's grip when Su dropped down, presumably to her knees and most certainly out of sight.

            Something was terribly wrong. Su had never acted like that. She had never looked so concerned. And Korra had never looked the way she'd looked around Bolin either. She'd never stayed so quiet for so long. And Bolin? Mako didn't even know where to begin. He'd never seen his brother lay in one spot for more than five minutes, let alone nearly three days. He'd never seen Bolin refuse food.

            Though Mako knew he was safe now, everything felt foreign and frightening. Everyone had changed, and Bolin was chief among them. Mako had never seen Bolin in such a pitiful state of being, but now it was different. Now Bolin was broken.


	38. Forward

            Ever since Bolin broke down upon their exit from Fire Fountain City, Korra was nervous about returning to Zaofu. Every time he whimpered or yelped or cried out in his sleep she wondered if he would ever adapt to life after murder. Every time he woke in blind panic, his chest heaving and his heart skipping and drumming, she wondered if he'd ever be the same wise-cracking idiot he'd been before the explosion in Ba Sing Se ripped his life apart.

            After Bolin woke from the collapse of the building in Republic City, Korra knew he had changed. The days immediately following were proof enough of that. But it wasn't until he fainted the first time that Korra worried he'd never recover completely, not from the malnourishment and the lethargy and the depression that caused it all. She never imagined at that point that he'd go farther downhill. But then he'd left for Zaofu, and though he'd spent a few days climbing out of his hole, the moment Korra returned with Asami and Opal he'd been cast back down and become more unstable than ever.

            The night Bolin sat in Korra's guest room and threatened to jump off of the roof, Korra imagined he'd hit rock bottom. There was no way he could go lower than that. But then he found out about Mako. Then he threw Opal like a ragdoll and threatened the unspeakable. He liquefied Suyin's courtyard. He broke down and lost sleep and stopped eating and started hating himself all over again.

            And now he'd killed people, and not just a few. As they flew into Earth Nation territory, Korra kept trying to count. There was the first in the alley, then three more in the courtyard, then another four or five as they'd run away. Then there had been a few before they'd fallen through the earth into the cavern. There'd been the handful in the hallway where he brought the ceiling down. There must have been ten or twelve there alone. Then there were the firebenders who'd met them when they'd emerged from the tunnel which meant another five or six, but Korra hadn't stuck around long enough to see who Bolin had killed and who he'd simply knocked out. She'd been so frightened during their flight that she'd lost count of how many firebenders they ran across, and even if she remembered them all it wouldn't take into consideration anyone who was caught by the flows of lava after the fact, those who were injured or killed indirectly. In all, there was no way for her to be sure. She'd been too caught up in running for her life to pay so much attention.

            Every time Korra considered the numbers, she wanted to throw up. He could've killed thirty or more people in a matter of hours. It could've been more than that, too. It could very, very easily have been more. In fact, she would bet on it.

            She wasn't surprised that Bolin didn't want to talk, and when she thought about it she wasn't surprised that he'd panicked about it, either. Bolin had never been violent or vengeful. He went out of his way to avoid hurting people if he could. But something in the collapse or the subsequent madness had changed him for the worse.

            Oogi landed before she was ready, and Korra stayed seated in the sky bison basket even after Opal, Asami, and Mako disembarked. To Korra's dismay, she heard Su's voice down below, and that made her throat tighten up. How was she going to explain what had happened to Su? How would she explain the pathetic position Bolin was in now? A formal arrangement had never been made, but it didn't need to be said that Su expected Korra to be in charge of Bolin's well being, and she'd clearly not done a very good job.

            He slept on her lap all quiet, his muscles slackened and his breathing soft and shallow, and he didn't even twitch when Su jumped into the basket. Korra kept her eyes low, kept her hands on Bolin's head and shoulders protectively until a noise came out of Su that sounded remarkably like crying and Su dropped down to her knees beside them. Korra didn't have to look up. She could see Su's pained expression as clear as day out of the corner of her eye.

            On one hand, Korra was warmed by Su's maternal reaction. It had always struck Korra as tragic that Mako and Bolin didn't have anyone they could rely on as parental figures, people who could provide them with guidance and advice and a swift kick in the rear when needed, so the fact that Su had settled into the role of mother for Bolin was, in a way, endearing. At the same time, the reaction made Korra feel more guilty than she'd ever felt before. There was no covering up Bolin's injuries and no denying how horrible he looked. There was no way to explain away his paleness or the gentle shudders that passed from his head to his toes in regular, slow waves.

            Su didn't say anything for a long time. She seemed content merely watching, and Korra wondered exactly why. Su hadn't said very much before they had left for Fire Fountain City, so there was no way for Korra to have known that Su expected Bolin not to return. When Su said, "I can't believe he came back," in a quivering, breathy voice, Korra startled to attention.

            All at once, Su looked to Korra with watery eyes and smiled sadly. "Thank you," Su said quietly. "Thank you for making sure he came home."

            Korra nodded. "He's hurt," she said. "He's hurt pretty badly. And he hasn't eaten in..." Korra shook her head and looked down at Bolin's sallow cheeks and dark eyes. Seeing him in the sunlight still made her want to cry even if most of the blood had been washed away by water or sweat or time. He still looked dirty. He still looked awful, like he'd die at any minute, and the shallowness in his breathing and the skipping in his pulse did little to prove it otherwise.

            "Not in a while, by the look of it," Su finished for her. "How long?"

            Korra shook her head again and squeezed Bolin's shoulder gently. "I don't know for sure. I haven't seen anything since we left Omashu. He might not have eaten anything there, either."

            Su looked aghast. "You've been gone almost a week."

            "He had some water," Korra said, lame but hopeful that it might make a difference.

            For a few seconds, Su watched Korra as if waiting for an explanation. She looked like she was fishing for words but couldn't think of what to say, like she wanted to scold Korra but couldn't.

            "He took the night watch," Korra explained quietly. She couldn't hold Su's gaze, so she didn't know whether this reasoning sat well with her. "He stayed up while we slept, and I think it was so that he could keep whatever he was doing private. I tried to stay up with him, but I couldn't. I fell asleep. And every time I yelled at him or tried to get him to eat he refused. What else could I do?"

            Korra glanced sheepishly up to find Su shaking her head, her eyes closed. "Nothing, Korra," she said calmly. "There was nothing else you could do. I'm glad you tried, though."

            To Korra's surprise, Su looked up with a gentle smile, then she patted Korra on the shoulder. Korra didn't know what to say.

            "We'll have him taken in immediately," Su said, her voice firmer now that she was taking the position of authority. "My people will see to it that he's fed and healed and rehabilitated."

            Korra seriously doubted that. How could they rehabilitate someone who'd just finished killing a veritable army of firebenders? How could they rehabilitate someone who gave into panic every time he looked at his own hands or saw his face reflected back at him? How could they rehabilitate someone who couldn't sleep for the awful nightmares?

            Bolin had resisted every prior attempt at rehabilitation, even if it meant burning bridges and destroying relationships. He'd said all along that he meant to suffer alone, that he meant to keep his problems to himself, and through everything that had happened he'd done it. He'd done it despite everyone's genuine attempts to help him.

            Korra wondered if he was too far gone to come back, if there was anything that anyone could do.

            But Mako was back, and Mako was healthy, and if anyone could bring Bolin around, it would be him. He had seemed intent upon understanding everything that had happened while he was away, if the number of questions and the persistence with which he asked them was any indication. Korra imagined that all of them would be having a long, long conversation with Su, and she hoped that their talk might get everyone on the same page.

            She also wondered if it might set everyone against each other again. It seemed to happen every time the lot of them sat down to discuss anything as a group. Bolin had acted so wildly different with each of them that it seemed there'd be no way to come to a consensus on the matter. And even among themselves there were conflicting feelings because all of them had seen the mood swings and the gentleness and the cynicism and the violence. They'd all seen the panic when Bolin realized he'd done something wrong and the regret after the fact.

            Korra sighed. Either way, she would have to face the facts. She'd witnessed Bolin killing people, and she'd have to say something about it at some point.

            She just wasn't sure how she'd do it.

            When Korra looked up again, Su had retreated to the edge of Oogi's basket and had begun talking to someone down below. She couldn't hear what Su was saying, but it became apparent within a few minutes. A group of metal clan guards joined them in the basket along with a few unarmored people that Korra didn't recognize, and she understood that they were there to remove Bolin to whatever facility Su deemed appropriate.

            "Su," Korra said quietly, and though she knew exactly what she wanted to say, when Su looked at her, the words caught in her throat. It wasn't until Su's face screwed up in concerned confusion that she managed to swallow deeply and say, "Put him in his room. I know he needs a healer. He probably needs a few of them. But put him in his room. He needs as much privacy as he can get."

            Again, Su looked as though she wanted to ask something but couldn't think of the words. Korra could tell by the wrinkle in her brow and the pursing of her lips.

            "I... We should talk about this later," Korra stammered, "when Mako and Asami and Opal are there, too. They need to hear it as much as you do."

            "Is everything okay?"

            Korra shook her head. "No," she said quietly. "It's not."

            Su looked dumbfounded. "Korra?"

            "When he wakes up, he's going to panic. I guarantee it. Just make sure he's in his room and make sure Opal, Asami, and Mako are far, far away. They'll only make it worse."

            "What? Why?"

            "I'll explain after dinner, when we're all together. Just promise me you'll keep him by himself."

            Su nodded, and before she could say anything else Korra jumped from Oogi's basket and walked as quickly as she could away toward her room, her eyes on the ground the whole while. She had to think. She had to clear her head and she had to think about what she would say to explain the situation in a way that would convey its gravity. She had to think about what to say that wouldn't make Bolin seem like a heartless murderer.

            It wouldn't be enough to merely say Bolin had killed someone and leave it at that. Mako had killed someone and Su had killed someone and Korra may have technically killed someone, she didn't know, but those scenarios had been different. Each of them had killed _one_ person because it was the only choice they had. There was strategy involved. Bolin had killed dozens, and he'd done it indiscriminately.

            When Korra got back to her room she collapsed onto her bed and pulled her pillow over her face. She felt that she might cry, but even as she lay there, nothing came out of her. At the same time she felt utterly empty, and try as she might to contemplate the conversation that would take place after, her mind was void of thought.

            It was an hour before a guard came to retrieve Korra for dinner, and she walked to the dining room with her eyes on the ground. She didn't look up when she entered the room and she didn't look up when she sat down. When the food came, she kept sitting idly. She wasn't hungry.

            Korra wasn't the only one who didn't eat and didn't talk. Asami sat with her chin on her hand, absently poking at her meal and taking only occasional, tiny bites. Opal had folded her hands in her lap and spent the entire meal staring down at them without touching her food at all. For her part, Suyin tried to act normally, but even her appetite seemed to have been dulled by the weird, dismal aura.

            The only person who ate with any gusto was Mako, and it seemed that he didn't care what was going on or how anyone else felt about it as long as there was food to shove in his mouth. Korra couldn't blame him, either. If he'd been locked up and his captors hadn't fed him, it was only reasonable that he'd eat like a human trash compactor.

            After Mako had demolished his plate, Opal's, and what remained of Asami's, he cast a suddenly very focused look on Su and said, "Okay, let's talk."

            Su smiled placatingly and rose from her chair, and she invited Mako to follow her to her office for a thorough conversation. The strangest thing about the matter was that she excused the girls to go see to themselves, and Korra couldn't figure out why Su wouldn't want them to be there when she explained everything to Mako. Maybe it was so that he didn't feel overwhelmed. Maybe it was so that she could control what information he got and when he got it. Maybe it was to protect him.

            Either way, Korra didn't argue. If nothing else, it afforded her some extra time to consider how she would explain what Bolin had done.

            For a while, Korra lay on her bed feeling an odd gurgling in her stomach that couldn't have been hunger because it got worse whenever she thought about Bolin and how he'd spent the last few days doing little but sleeping on her lap and hugging her around the waist like a little boy. That pesky, adolescent attraction had come back again and was clouding her judgment, and Korra knew it. Somehow, this irrational thought had come into the back of her head that said it was more important to protect Bolin than it was to tell the others how he'd killed people. Objectively she knew otherwise. She had to tell because eventually everyone would find out anyway, and it would be better for everyone if they found out sooner rather than later.

            Korra wondered for a while if she should go check in and see how Bolin was faring, whether the healers had discovered anything that might help him either physically or emotionally. But she shook her head at herself and scratched idly at her churning stomach. Now was a bad time. Now was an _awful_ time, if she was honest with herself. To go in there now would only conflict her even more, and it would ruin any nerve she'd mustered to speak up because it was just as likely that spilling the truth would hurt Bolin as it would help him.

            In the end, Korra fell back on old habits. Asami had always been the brains of the operation, and she'd seemed interested in Bolin's well being to boot. At least, she'd seemed interested before they set out for Fire Fountain City, before he'd hurt Opal and scared them all half to death. And she seemed to care about him after the fact, after he'd fallen into Oogi's basket all blood-soaked and panicked. She'd definitely cared then, because when he collapsed she thought he was going to die.

            Korra knocked gently on Asami's door and stood for an awkward time before Asami opened it. She'd clearly just gotten back from a shower and must have been getting dressed; her hair was still soaked and a little unkempt, and as Korra entered the room she regretted more than ever that their relationship was on hold.

            Asami sat on her own bed and started picking at her hair with a comb, and the same as she'd done the last time they'd spoken like this, Korra sat cross-legged on the floor. She didn't have the status to invite herself onto Asami's bed, not when Asami occupied it herself and certainly not when Asami looked so thoroughly harassed.

            "I was hoping we could talk," Korra said sheepishly. She deflated even more when Asami shot her a skeptical glance.

            "I figured as much when you knocked on my door."

            Korra swallowed hard and fidgeted. She tugged at her pant legs and watched the wrinkles spread and smooth in turn. "It seems like every time I come talk to you like this, something awful happens."

            Asami stopped working at her hair and shrugged. "Maybe that's because you only talk to me about awful things, and because something has to be done about it."

            "Look," Korra snapped, "I'm trying to be delicate here and you're blowing me off. Now I need to talk to someone about what I saw on Baihe Island before I explode, and since Mako is busy with Su and Opal hates me and Bolin is... Well... He's in no position to talk to anyone... You're all I've got. Are you going to be civil or not?"

            When Korra looked at Asami, the skepticism had gone. She looked mildly shocked now, her hands fallen limp into her lap, and as her expression shifted toward curiosity she got off the bed and sat on the ground, too, knee to knee with Korra the same as they had done last time. It was a gesture that Korra understood clearly: In these situations they weren't a couple who'd had a romantic spat and oscillated between love and hate every five minutes. In these situations, they were equals.

            Korra sighed and looked at the floor. "I wanted to ask you what happened when we were separated. When we were attacked by the combustion bender and Bolin froze up and you grabbed him and ran away. Where did you guys go? What happened?"

            It was Asami's turn to sigh, now, and she assumed much the same position as Korra. Her shoulders sagged and she tugged absently at the hem of her nightdress. She shook her head and sighed a second time, and Korra understood that Asami must have had as much on her mind as she did.

            "Well obviously he panicked," Asami began slowly. "And he kept panicking for a while after I pushed him out of the way of the blast. I had every intention of staying to fight with you and Opal, but he grabbed me and dragged me away before I could do anything about it." She paused and rubbed at her arm. "He kind of hurt my wrist," she added with a shake of her head. "He gets a little reckless when he's scared, like he doesn't know his own strength."

            "Yeah, I know."

            "Well, he and I ran along the rooftops since the firebenders couldn't follow us. When he tossed us up there with his earthbending I landed on him and broke the plate in his shoulder brace, I guess, and it was hurting him pretty bad. And his side was hurting him pretty bad, too, but I didn't know about that at the time. I wasn't very nice to him about it."

            Asami paused as if waiting for Korra to scold her, but Korra didn't say a word. She didn't want to jeopardize this conversation.

            "So we got onto a balcony and dipped into one of the buildings. It was an apartment. We explored a little bit and found a stairwell that led into a bunch of tunnels below the city. You remember how he said he thought there was a tunnel, don't you?"

            Korra nodded. "I remember. We got lost in there, too."

            Asami jerked her head in understanding. "Well, we got down there and he had to rest a few times and I thought he was just worn out from panicking so much and because he hadn't eaten. I really didn't feel like taking it easy on him because he brought it all on himself. I guess I was a jerk, if I'm honest, and he was a jerk right back. But we wandered around for a while before he heard something or felt something and ran off. That's when he ditched his shoes. He was trying to feel things through the floor and couldn't focus on it."

            "Oh."

            "Well, that's when we found Opal. She came running at us and had a whole bunch of firebenders and combustion benders and lightning benders on her heels, and I don't know where they came from."

            "They came from up above," Korra explained. "They ambushed us and separated us. They must have followed her down when I ran away."

            "I guess that's probably it, then."

            "I shouldn't have left her."

            "I doubt there was anything you could've done otherwise. We couldn't take them on and there were three of us. Even with the Avatar State you'd have been hard pressed to push them back without hurting yourself in the process."

            "You're right," Korra said sadly. "I tried to hold them off while I was by myself and I used the Avatar State. I was too tired to really do anything, though, and there were too many of them for me to fight back."

            "Well, that's how it was for us, too, so don't feel bad, okay?"

            Korra glanced up and offered a sheepish smile, and Asami returned it. It made Korra feel a little better.

            "We ran. Had no idea where we were going, were all scared out of our minds. Bolin tried to slow them down, he lavabent at them and made a couple of barriers, but nothing really stuck." Asami sounded a little sick when she said that, and she paused and rubbed at her forehead. "We came across a bunch of bodies."

            " _What_?"

            The sick tone didn't leave, and as Asami pressed on, she went a little pale. "Yeah. There were a lot... Of bodies, I mean. They'd been dead a while, by the looks of it, but it was hot and cold and humid and dry in those tunnels without any real rhyme or reason, so the rate of decomposition could've been accelerated. I don't know." Asami swallowed hard. "We looked around for a few minutes, but were attacked again. We ran. I don't know exactly how it happened, but the next thing I knew nobody was running beside me, and when I turned around--"

            Asami seemed to have choked on the words, and she stopped talking suddenly and completely. As Korra watched her shifting uncomfortably back and forth she noticed the slightest shuddering in her shoulders, a telltale sign that she was about to cry, and Asami began rubbing at her eyes. She was doing a poor job of covering the emotion up.

            "What happened?" Korra asked gently, and without thinking she reached out and touched Asami's elbow in a loving gesture. "When you turned around, what happened?"

            "Opal had fallen down," Asami said with a sniffle. She seemed to be working hard to keep her voice steady. She breathed deep and took her time with each sentence. "And Bolin turned around to help her. You saw, her arm was all banged up. You saw, right?"

            "I saw."

            "Well, he absolutely railed her. Knocked her out of the line of fire so hard that she pretty much _flew_ down the hallway, but I understand why he did it. If he hadn't, she'd have been killed for sure. He wanted to get her out of there no matter what, even if it hurt her and even if it meant putting himself in danger." Asami shook her head, and her voice took on a noticeable wavering, but Korra couldn't tell if it was a frightened waver or a sad one. Asami never looked up from the ground, either, so Korra couldn't see her face twisting in fear and grief. "I guess Bolin wanted to stop the firebenders from advancing on us," she continued. "He planted himself in the middle of that tunnel like it was the very last thing he was going to do, like he did when he lavabent for the first time. He looked ready to die and I was scared because I remembered how before we left he kept talking about... About hurting... Killing... Himself... But he fought back. He... He crushed them. He knocked them down and then brought the floor up underneath them. It all happened in a few seconds, but..." She stopped. When she shook her head, Korra noticed how significantly pale Asami had become, how the tears had started trickling down her cheeks. "He crushed them all. There must've been fifteen people there all together, and he smashed them into jelly like it was nothing."

            Korra gaped at her, watched as Asami dropped her head into her hands and breathed in a very slow, very controlled way. On one hand, Korra had expected the news. Bolin had been filthy when he'd found her on the surface, all covered with blood and flesh, and that he'd killed someone was the only explanation that made any sense. But Korra never could have guessed at the number. She could never have guessed _how_ he'd killed them.

            Either way, the body count rose, and Korra's stomach dropped again. She felt sick but couldn't force out any words.

            "It was horrible," Asami continued thickly. "He made this horrible noise when he did it, too, like this horrible _screaming noise_ that I've never heard come out of _anybody_ before, and there was a combustion bender there, and just before he..." Asami shook her head, and it looked to Korra as though she was stifling a gag. "Right before he was crushed, he fired and knocked Bolin down. I thought for sure Bo was dead. I knew he was dead. He landed really hard on his shoulder and I thought he might've hit his head again. But he skidded ten or twelve feet down the hall and then he didn't move. He didn't move and he didn't make a noise and he was all pale and bloody. I could see it in the dark. I mean, I had my flashlight, but it was dark, still. I thought for sure he was dead. I didn't even notice where he'd landed, on the body, but then the smell hit me and I looked up and I knew--"

            "On the body?" Korra gasped. "What?"

            Asami shook her head and let go a quiet sob. "I don't know who it was. I didn't even think it was a person at first because it was so badly decomposed. There was just... Just... _Fluid_ , and there were some bones there, but it was a lot of fluid and a lot of slimy stuff that must have been the fleshy bits that hadn't decayed yet. Bolin skidded right into it and it like... It kind of popped and the smell was horrible and it oozed and leaked and got all over him and he was just _lying in it_." Asami paused again, and this time she couldn't stifle the gagging. It took her a few seconds to recover, and when she did she breathed very deeply. "Bolin came around pretty quickly, all things considered, and then I looked up and I saw Mako right in front of us in this weird makeshift looking cell, and then everything happened too fast. Bolin was on his feet and he was yelling at us and he was yelling at Mako, and then he ripped the stone out of Mako's cell as easily as if he was ripping a piece of paper in half, and then he bolted. He said that someone had to help you. Then we were alone and Mako got us out. He was remarkably level headed considering the circumstances, but he was really confused and didn't believe that Bolin was Bolin until after we'd gotten out of the tunnels."

            Korra nodded, and Asami fell silent except for occasional sniffling. Every few seconds she rubbed at her nose and her eyes with the backs of her wrists, and she never looked up.

            With an enormous sigh, Korra said, "He killed them in front of me, too."

            Asami snapped to attention. "What?"

            Korra nodded. "Yeah," she said, and looked at the floor. "A sentry spotted me, and right when he signaled to the others that he'd found something, Bolin chucked a hunk of lava straight into him. It happened so fast that I didn't even know what it was at first. It just splattered all over the guy and started eating away at him and when he fell down, Bolin grabbed me and dragged me along."

            It was Asami's turn to gape, now, and Korra didn't mind. It must have been, in some strange capacity, a relief for her in the same way that Asami's story had been a relief for Korra. There was some comfort in knowing they weren't alone in what they had witnessed, in knowing that Bolin hadn't changed his behavior for either of them. For the first time since he'd collapsed in the combustion bender's cell, they could both agree that something had gone horribly wrong in Bolin's head.

            "Yeah, I know," Korra continued. She held Asami's gaze the whole time, watched as the tears kept coming and as she covered her mouth with her fingertips. "So there was that guy, that was the first that I saw. Then there were three we ran across--we were ambushed, really--but there were these three guys that he just shot up into the air. They must've gone twenty feet off the ground, just straight up, and when they landed I knew they were gone. One landed flat on his head. I mean... It was awful. There were so many."

            Korra breathed deep and dropped her eyes to the floor. "So I froze up because I was... I didn't know what to do. I was afraid and I couldn't believe what I was seeing, so I froze up. Well, he knocked me out of the way of a few combustion benders who'd ganged up on us, and we fell through the floor into this weird cavern thing. It must've been the same way it was for you. He didn't wake up. Well, I was out, too, but I came around first and he was still gone. Must've landed on his shoulder because it came out. So I set it and you know, went through the motions we always go through when he faints--legs up and all--and eventually he woke up. We set off again, but he was weird. Weirder, anyway. He seemed super out of it and he sounded kind of funny, too, like he didn't know where he was or what he was doing and was faking it to make me feel better."

            "Like he did on the bison?" Asami asked.

            "Kind of," Korra said slowly. She hesitated to say it was exactly the same because it hadn't been. On the bison he'd been violently delirious. His denial of reality had been absolute, but in the tunnels it had been different. He'd been more understated about it all, on the whole, similar to how he'd been in the hospital. When he spoke it had sounded like his brain was lagging. His voice had that same dreamy, quiet quality that it had had back then. He'd been relatively in touch with reality, though, like he knew what was going on around him but didn't understand it. It was like he couldn't wrap his head around things.

            "See," Korra continued, opting to forego the lengthy explanation, "that was when he started... Failing... I guess. I don't know a better word for it, but it was when his body started giving out. There was this lull in the action when things seemed to have calmed down, and the calmer he got the weaker he got. He fell down like, two or three times and then got mad at me when I was concerned."

            "As he does," Asami said, a little flippantly.

            "As he does," Korra agreed. There was no denying that truth. "But I told him eventually that I wasn't going to let him stay there and die. I knew that's what he was going for, especially after everything that happened in Republic City and in Zaofu. And he hadn't been eating anything and you know he wasn't sleeping. He was being stupidly reckless and putting himself into situations that could have really easily gotten him killed. Well, I called him on it, and after that he seemed to lighten up a little bit. He came back. Well, he did for a little bit, anyway. The second more firebenders showed up he went to town again. We were surrounded, so he threw lava behind us to close them off, and then a squad of about a dozen came out in front of us, and he pulled the ceiling straight down on them. Killed all but one, and after Bolin questioned him about how to get out of the tunnels, he covered him in lava. Buried the guy alive, burned him alive."

            "And you watched all of this?"

            "What else was I supposed to do?"

            "Stop him?"

            Korra shook her head. "There was no way I could have stopped him. Even if I hadn't been scared out of my mind, I was too tired to fight with him about it and he wasn't listening to a word I was saying. You said it yourself, he doesn't know his own strength when he gets scared like that. If I had tried to stand in his way, he might've attacked me, too."

            Asami sighed in resignation. "You're not wrong."

            "We got out of the tunnels and were attacked in a building. He laid two guys out flat, one punch each, and then he dropped a wall on some others. Once we were outside we headed to the east, and he threw lava everywhere. Anyone he saw he threw lava at, and even when he didn't see someone he threw it anyway. I'm pretty sure he liquefied every street and path we ran past. And then we were at the bison, and you know the rest."

            "He killed the two who were chasing after you, too, at the very end," Asami added quietly. "So how many? In total, how many people did he kill?"

            "I don't know," Korra said. "I was trying to count the whole way home. I put my estimate between thirty and forty, but that could be way off. That only counts what I saw.        Add in the bunch you saw and it could be upward of fifty. Add in the people that neither of us saw, anyone who might've been caught off guard by the lava after we escaped, and it could go up still."

            Asami put her forehead on her hands and turned her face to the floor. She looked sick, and when she spoke she sounded sick, too. "Fifty people."

            "There's no way he's going to talk about it," Korra said, "and that has me worried. Su said she was going to try to _rehabilitate him_ and I can only imagine that part of that is going to involve trying to make him talk to someone. There's no way he'll do it. He wouldn't even talk to me. I mean, he won't talk to anyone about even little things, things that aren't really consequential."

            "He shouldn't have come with us," Asami said, her voice barely more than a whisper so that Korra had to focus very hard to hear her. "He never should have come along. If he'd stayed home, none of this would've happened."

            Korra felt indignant for a moment she spent silently working to hold back. It was a ridiculous statement from Korra's perspective, but maybe Asami saw things differently. In Korra's opinion, if Bolin hadn't been there, they'd all have died. If he hadn't been there to blindly maneuver Opal and Asami through the tunnels, they never would have found Mako. If he'd not dispatched the two firebenders who'd chased her out of the city, Korra would probably be dead.

            "I told him that," Asami admitted, "before we left. I told him that I didn't want him to come."

            The anger went out of Korra and confusion took its place. "What?"

            "When I was packing our things in Oogi's basket and you went off to find Pabu or get food or whatever it was, and you left Bolin there with me. I told him that I didn't want him to come with because I thought he'd be dangerous, and that the only reason we were letting him go was because you insisted on it. I told him that you thought it'd be cruel to leave him behind. I didn't know it at the time, but I think that hurt him. I think it set him back. I told him that I just wanted him to sit in a corner and shut up and keep his eyes off of all of us because I was afraid he'd follow through on his threats to hurt Opal. But then he came right back at me and said that once all of this was over I'd never have to see him again. It was a pretty clear threat against himself. I knew right then I'd messed up, but now that I look back on it, maybe I should've stood my ground."

            Korra kept her look of disbelief low. She'd known all along that Asami had said something to Bolin before they'd set off, because the way he was acting before Korra left and the way he acted after she returned were like night and day. Now Korra understood that it must have been Asami's angry ranting that set his mind on dying.

            "Part of me thinks I was right," Asami went on, apparently oblivious to Korra's mounting anger. But Asami also sounded thoroughly regretful, and that helped temper her.      "Part of me still thinks he shouldn't have come along because it really did hurt things in the end."

            "If Bolin hadn't come with us, it would've hurt things more. Either he'd be dead because he'd feel more worthless than he does right now and do something stupid, or you or Opal or I would be dead because he wasn't there to help. There's no nice way to say it, Asami, but none of us have the guts to do what Bolin did, and what he did was the only thing that kept us alive."

            "There had to be another way," Asami protested. "He didn't have to kill them."

            "He kind of did," Korra replied.

            The two fell into a brittle quiet, and Korra realized at once that any chance at productivity they might've found in the conversation was spent. Korra supposed it was inevitable that they would come to a disagreement at some point: They always came to a disagreement. But at least the talk had been fruitful for a time.

            "Mako doesn't know about it," Korra suggested. "At least, I know that I didn't say anything to him about it and I know that Su won't say anything to him about it because she doesn't know, either. Did Opal say anything?"

            "No," Asami said with a shake of her head. "Opal hasn't really talked to anyone."

            "I'd appreciate it if you could fill him in, then. He's got more right to know about it than any of us, and you're probably  the best person to explain it."

            Asami's face screwed up. "Why?"

            Korra shrugged as she stood. "Because you didn't spend the whole trip home with Bolin's face on your lap." She sighed and patted her thighs as though brushing away some dust, and then she walked to the door. As she opened it, Korra paused and looked at the floor. "I'm too close. Mako won't think I'm being objective. That's just how he is."

            Asami's head tilted ever slightly. She looked very confused, but at the same time as though she understood. "I get it," she said. "Where are you going?"

            "Thanks for talking to me," Korra said. "I'll check in with you later."

            The only thought in Korra's mind as she left Asami's room was that she wanted to stay far away from everyone else for a while. She didn't want to run the risk of saying something out of line or something that might get her or Bolin in any more trouble than he already was. Half the reason she'd gone to talk to Asami was so that Asami could be the messenger, because Asami was the most credible person to deliver this kind of news to everyone. Korra hadn't been kidding when she said she was too close.

            It was weird how Korra had begun to understand these things. She'd spent so long going through the motions and being so caught up in everything that she couldn't take a step back to see what was really happening. For such a long time she'd been blindly reacting to the events around her rather than analyzing them and acting accordingly. There hadn't been any critical thinking at all. Everything she'd done since the collapse had been all emotion and no brain.

            She wanted desperately to fix that, and she needed to be proactive.

            Korra detoured from the path to her room without much contemplation, and she headed straight for Bolin's door. After all, it was her obligation to make sure he was doing all right, and as the only person that he would speak to, she needed to be there for him.

            She wasn't surprised to find Bolin on the bed atop the covers, and she wasn't surprised to see Opal sitting on the floor beside it absently scratching Pabu between the ears, but she was surprised to find the room otherwise empty. Opal looked up when Korra opened the door but she didn't say anything. Pabu jumped from her hands and scurried under the bed. Bolin didn't move.

            Seeing Opal made Korra's stomach churn. She'd come with every intention of talking to Bolin _alone_ , but there would be no such conversation if Opal was there. Even if Korra felt comfortable broaching the topic of his killing spree with Opal in the room there was no way in eternity that Bolin would discuss it. She doubted he'd discuss it even if Opal wasn't there.

            Korra closed the door quietly, and when her back was to Opal she took a deep breath and swallowed hard. Then she rounded again and offered a disarming, sweet smile that she hoped conveyed concern, fake as it might actually be.

            "How are things?" Korra asked. When Opal shrugged and dropped her eyes back to the rug, Korra's smile faded. "Bad, then?"

            "They sedated him," Opal said. It sounded like she'd been crying, but the tiny waver in her voice was the only evidence left. "He attacked the healers when he woke up and they put him out."

            "They put him out?"

            "Yeah. I don't know what they used, but it wasn't pretty."

            Korra crossed the room and sat on the floor at Opal's shoulder, propped her back against the wall, and joined Opal in examining the rug. "Were you here for it?"

            Opal nodded. "I've been here since we finished with dinner, not that it's done any good."

            "What happened, then?" Korra asked. "I mean, if you don't mind me asking. What happened?"

            "Oh, I don't know. There were two healers in here and they were messing around with his ribs and he woke up in the middle of it. They must've poked him the wrong way or something, because he yelped and bolted upright like he was being attacked or something. He panicked. Surprise."

            Korra had never heard Opal so deadpan in her delivery before. Even with all the drama and the heartache, she'd managed to keep some degree of her indomitable optimism around her, even if it wasn't always genuine. Just like her mother, Opal always tried to maintain her front. Odd that she was letting it down now.

            "He jumped up on the bed and lavabent at one of them. He missed, but you can see where it landed." Opal pointed across the room, and indeed a black hunk of obsidian rock had cooled and melded with the floor. "They had something on hand to take care of it, it was a needle or something like that. When I yelled at Bolin to stop it distracted him enough that the healers jammed it into his leg. It wasn't enough the first time around, so they did it a second time. He stood there for a second all quiet and surprised, and then he just dropped."

            "Oh."

            Korra felt fairly lame. What else was she supposed to say? She'd missed her opportunity to be of any help here, and Opal had clearly suffered as a result. Bolin had suffered, too, but Korra supposed that in the end he'd be suffering no matter what she did.

            "He's been in and out," Opal said, "if you wanted to talk to him."

            "He's talking?"

            Opal shook her head sadly. "Not much. He just mumbled something a couple times but I couldn't tell what it was, and when I asked him questions and called his name he didn't respond at all. I think there's too much in his system for him to think straight."

            Korra wondered if that was indeed the case, or if Bolin had waked to hear Opal calling him and clammed up as he'd been doing since their fight. Bolin had made no qualms about ignoring Opal before. If Asami's story was true, the only real interactions Bolin had had with Opal was knocking her away from the firebenders before they found Mako and snapping at her when she saw the bruise.

            Two words. It had been two words in how long?

            "I'm going to make a weird request," Korra said after a time in the quiet. She tried to match her tone to the depressing atmosphere, and she didn't look to see whether Opal had acknowledged the statement. "I talked with Asami tonight about what I saw, and she told me what you guys saw. I asked her if she'd explain everything to Mako when he's done with your mom. I think it would be a good idea if you were there, too."

            "Why?"

            "Because you can give just as much insight as Asami can, and I really think Mako is going to need the support. If Su is laying on the information as thick as she needs to be, then Asami hits him with the whole," Korra paused and swallowed hard again. "If Asami hits Mako with the whole _killing people_ thing, he's going to need someone there to hold him up. He's going to have questions, you know how Mako is, and I really doubt Asami will be able to answer them all. I think it would be really helpful for you to be there, too."

            "Why don't you do it?"

            Korra shook her head with a sigh. She couldn't be as honest with Opal as she could be with Asami. She couldn't say that she had gotten too close to Bolin to provide an unbiased opinion of what he'd been doing and how he'd been acting. Deep in the back of her mind, Korra knew that Bolin's actions of late could be described with a battery of negative words and phrases: irrational, unhinged, angry, violent, depressed, combative, aggressive, reckless, suicidal. But Korra had also seen the other side of things. She'd seen him when his mind was fully engaged, when he thought hard about what he'd been doing and regretted it fully. She'd listened to him try to explain the jumble of thoughts and feelings that had made him so confused for such a long time, and whether it was empathy or love or some other weird thing, Korra had gone too soft on him to lay the truth out flat to anyone. She couldn't convince herself of the truth, let alone convincing Opal.

            It was a dangerous prospect, Korra thought suddenly, letting Opal and Asami be the ones who gave Mako the details. They had both been ridiculously hard on Bolin, but he'd not opened up to them, either. He'd not presented them with the same vulnerability that he'd shown to Korra. Of course they wouldn't know about it. They'd never seen it. To Opal and Asami, Bolin was little more than a psychotic brain-damaged stranger walking around in Bolin's body.

            "I was asked to stand guard for a while," Korra lied. "At least, I was asked to keep an eye on things until someone else can relieve me."

            "Oh." Opal sounded downcast again. "I guess that makes sense, having the Avatar State and all. If he goes crazy you can get him under control again."

            Korra grimaced. Opal had no idea how true and how complicated that statement was. Yes, Korra could control Bolin to an extent, but it wasn't through force. It had never been through force. Korra doubted very much that the Avatar State would have any impact on him at all if he was having one of his manic episodes. In fact, she imagined that if she presented him with the Avatar State, he'd laugh his cold, derisive laugh straight in her face. And he'd be right to do it, too.

            There was no use in Korra suggesting she'd use any kind of force with Bolin anymore. She'd been too open with him and she'd admitted too much about her feelings for him to take her threats seriously. He knew exactly how she felt now. He knew she wouldn't hurt him. That bridge had been crossed the night she'd told him that he'd kissed her, and even though Korra's admission hadn't been particularly straightforward then, he'd been able to fill in the blanks. He'd proved that when he called her on it in the tunnels, when she said that he had to get out of Fire Fountain City alive because they had _things to work out_. He knew exactly what those _things_ were, and he hadn't seemed happy about it.

            But even without the threat of violence, Korra had managed to placate him even when he seemed unreachable. In fact, every time he lost control lately, it had been Korra who'd brought him back, whether by sitting with him or talking gently to him or yelling at him or touching him. Somehow she'd always managed to remind him that he wasn't some kind of wild animal and that no matter how much he thought he couldn't control himself, he could reign it back in with some help.

            All Korra could hope for now was that he'd open up again. If she could get his take on the matter of Fire Fountain City, she could understand and convey his rationale to the others. She might be able to convince _them_ that he wasn't a wild animal, too.

            "When is Mako supposed to show up?" Opal asked, and the sound of her voice drew Korra from her thinking. "I mean, when is he going to talk to Asami?"

            Korra shrugged. "Don't know. Sometime soon, I'd imagine. He's been with Su since dinner, you know that, and I can't imagine she's got too much to say."

            "I suppose not."

            All at once, Opal pushed herself to her feet and leaned heavily against the wall. For a second she regarded Korra with a look that was equal parts doubtful and suspicious and sad, and then she turned the same look on Bolin, even as he lay there unmoving. She touched his shoulder gently, lovingly, and when he didn't respond, she excused herself from the room.

            For a while, Korra stayed sitting on the floor, fidgeting and listening to Pabu chittering quietly and waiting for something to happen. She hated how awkward she felt in the quiet, but she hated even more that she had expected anything _but_ the quiet. Now she was sitting there, it seemed obvious that Bolin would be either asleep or otherwise indisposed. No matter what, he wouldn't have been in a position to have any kind of meaningful talk with her, and it may even have been a little cruel for Korra to have considered bringing up the topic so soon after the fact.

            Again, she felt a keen sense of self-awareness. She'd entered the room with every intention of being hard and concise and objective. She'd entered the room meaning to get the facts straight from Bolin's mouth. But now she was here, now she had seen him laying all weak and exposed on the bed, all that resolve had given way to _feelings_.

            Korra hated the feelings. She'd hated them for a long, long time, ever since she began understanding what they had been doing to her. The feelings had made her stop acting like herself, especially when Bolin was in the room, especially when he showed any kind of vulnerability at all. She felt like a stupid little girl with a stupid little crush who couldn't do the things she needed to do because the butterflies in her stomach had started eating away at her brain.

            She hated what he was doing to her without ever meaning to, and she hated that she was allowing it to happen.

            It didn't take long for the butterflies to consume the anger that had been bubbling in her gut, and when Korra recognized the change in herself, she stood to leave. But then she stopped, and she considered Bolin laying all prone on the bed, and she watched him curiously.

            There'd been no outward change in him except that it looked like he was sleeping soundly. Then again, Korra could scarcely tell the difference between Bolin sleeping and Bolin unconscious anymore. He was still all pale and gaunt. There were still streaks of rust-colored filth here and there among the delicate creases in his skin. With his hands around his face, Korra could see more clearly than ever the dirt caked under his nails and a series of small scrapes and cuts that no doubt came from their fleeing.

            The curiosity deepened. It seemed that the healers hadn't done much outside of knocking him out. The only thing that was obvious was the bandaging on his right arm, but that could just as easily have been what Korra had applied on their trip home.

            She supposed it made sense. It hadn't been that long since they'd arrived. It might've taken the healers longer than Korra imagined to get Bolin settled in his bed again. They'd have had to do some kind of preliminary checking on him before they set about fixing the damages, at least to see what all needed fixing, and if Bolin had waked and attacked them in the midst of that preliminary checking, Korra figured they might take a break.

            Just as Opal had done before she left, Korra touched Bolin's shoulder. It was hot. It was alarmingly hot, and when Korra pressed her wrist against his forehead, it was hot, too.

            Suddenly it all made sense, the lethargy on the way home and the attacking of the healers and the need for sedation. It made sense that he wasn't under the blankets. He wasn't just wounded, he was sick. It explained everything from why he'd slept all the way home to whatever delirium had hit him after the fact.

            Korra sat and dropped her chin onto her hand. She supposed she'd gotten what she wished for, if nothing else: A place where she wouldn't be bothered by anyone. Opal would keep the others away, if she was half as tentative about Bolin as she seemed to have been, and it wasn't likely that the healers would return until the fever broke.

            Just as Opal said, Bolin drifted in and out, and sometimes he drifted farther than others. Once he woke and grumbled incoherently and didn't respond when Korra spoke to him. Once he woke and said something about steam buns. When Pabu jumped onto the bed and nestled beside Bolin's middle, he grumbled something about a pythonaconda.

            In all, Korra was content to sit in the mostly-quiet because she didn't have to think and she didn't have to problem solve. She didn't have to worry about drama.

            Su stopped in for a few minutes well after dark and she stayed just long enough to let Korra know that she'd finished speaking with Mako and that the conversation had been tense but productive. She explained to Korra what the healers had told her about Bolin, that he'd suffered three broken ribs and a mild infection from the wound on his arm, but that as long as he stayed in bed and rested the way he needed to that it would clear up on its own and wasn't much to worry about. Then she mentioned that everyone had retired back to their rooms and she patted Bolin on the arm, smiled comfortingly at Korra, and excused herself for the evening.

            Korra wondered if they had all actually gone back to their rooms, or if Asami and Opal were sitting with Mako at this very moment explaining all of the horrible things Bolin had done that Su hadn't known about. That must have been the case, because otherwise Korra was certain that Mako would have stopped in the same way that Su had.

            She couldn't have said what time it was when Bolin began stirring again, but it jolted her out of her thoughtless trance and spooked Pabu enough that he dove from the bed. It didn't take a genius or a healer to know he was having another nightmare: Korra had seen it enough times by now that she could spot it a mile off. This time was weird, though, because every time he'd suffered them on the return trip he'd writhed and squirmed and made pathetic noises until either Korra woke him up or he startled awake on his own. Now he only gave occasional, mildly uncontrolled twitches, and the only noises he made were tiny guttural sounds that came from his throat without any benefit of articulation.

            Korra watched for a minute or two while she worked to decide if it was worth it to try and wake him. he needed to rest, it was true, but Korra wasn't certain if what he was doing right now really qualified. Besides, she'd promised him that she'd wake him up if he started freaking out, and she could see no reason why that promise would stop being valid just because they weren't on the sky bison anymore.

            She started with a gentle shake on Bolin's arm, and though he twitched at the contact and grimaced at the pressure on his side, he didn't wake. It took two more similar but slightly more forceful shakes for him to open his eyes, and even when he seemed to have waked he still looked oddly out of touch. He glanced up at her the same way he'd done on the return trip, and once he'd recognized that it was Korra sitting there with him, he laid his head back down and closed his eyes again.

            He said something that Korra didn't hear, so she leaned down over him and asked him to repeat himself.

            "Lay down."

            Korra didn't move. She sat there with her hand on his shoulder, still bent low, and tried to wrap her head around those two simple words. It was possible she could've misheard. He'd been quiet, the syllables had slurred together a bit.

            "Lay down. Go to sleep."

            It was certain now. He'd said what she thought he'd said, and that realization made her stomach swell. "I don't think that's a good idea," Korra said.

            "Then get out."

            Bolin's tone had been anything but angry. He sounded dreamy and tired, like he truly didn't care one way or another what Korra did, and she was certain that it was because of whatever tranquilizer the healers had given him. Still, she had two choices: Lay down or leave. She chose to lay down.

            She situated herself with her front to his back and folded her arms beneath her head, and as she lay there listening to him trying to fall back to sleep, she wondered if staying was the correct choice, if he'd really need her to be there once he fell back asleep or if it would be just as well if she left him alone.

            "How long did Opal stay?" Bolin asked, half-sleeping.

            "Don't know. She left pretty much when I got here."

            "I heard you talking."

            The swelling in Korra's stomach stopped dead and the bottom dropped out. "You did?"

            "I'm sorry," Bolin said dreamily. "I didn't mean to scare you. I didn't mean for any of this to happen."

            "Hey," Korra cooed, "stop that."

                        "I'm not supposed to be here."

            "Why do you keep saying that?"

            "You know why."

            He'd said the words so sadly that Korra didn't know how to react. She'd known all along how he'd felt about the matter of returning home, and she wondered genuinely if he'd ever have killed those people if he knew he'd eventually have to face the consequences.

            She sighed, at a loss, and patted him on the arm from behind. "I'm glad you're here, though."

            "I'm glad _you're_ here."

            Again, Korra wasn't sure she'd heard him right, but before she had the chance to adjust herself or clarify the matter, Bolin had tentatively grabbed her hand and pulled it around his middle. She lay there stunned by his boldness for a second, and then put her head back down. As long as he was holding her captive by the arm, there would be no leaving, and she wasn't entirely sure she had a problem with that. He was warm--almost uncomfortably so now--and the bed was cozy and the room was quiet and safe, and Korra knew from experience that there was no harm in sharing a bed for the night.

            For a while she thought about what he'd said, that he was glad she was there, and she wondered if he'd been being honest or if the statement had been derived from the drugging or the fever or some combination of the two. He'd sounded tired and a little delirious, and even now it seemed that he'd fallen straight back to sleep. He'd let go her hand, and had curled his own back around his face the same way he'd done before Korra had waked him before.

            She wondered if he'd remember their exchange in the morning.

            Korra didn't know if she slept or if she didn't sleep, but she knew that she spent a long time somewhere in the strange twilight in between. Once in a while her mind sat firmly on the side of the tangible, feeling warmth and hearing Pabu rustling somewhere over by the window, listening to Bolin's calm breathing as he slept. Occasionally, when the thought occurred to her, she moved her hand to his chest and pressed it firmly down to feel for the skipping, but each time she did she found only a slow, steady beating and dropped her hand back to his stomach, relieved.

            Sometimes she felt like she was dreaming, and sometimes she dreamed of reality, and sometimes she couldn't tell the difference between the two. One second she would be asleep, dreaming of snuggling close to Bolin's back and rubbing her thumb absently over his middle where her hand had fallen idle, feeling the subtle dips and rises in his body that once had been so defined. Then she would wake, and her thumb would still be absently brushing against him the same as it had been in her dream. The only difference was that when she dreamed, she didn't feel the same curious warmth in her middle that she felt when she was awake.

            Eventually Bolin stirred and Korra woke again, except this time his movement didn't seem to be a shift for comfort, and it was only after he sighed and pressed her hand into his stomach that Korra realized he was touching her at all.

            Korra couldn't help but be a little startled by how similar the touch had been to their night together in the hospital, how he'd had his hand on hers and made noises that Korra imagined she was never meant to hear. But this time he wasn't brain dead and he wasn't so grievously injured. His delirium wasn't as complete as it had been then.

            "Bo?" Korra asked, "are you awake?"

            She couldn't tell if what came out of him was more of a weird smug giggle or some kind of pleasant sigh, but it set her hair on end all over again.

            "You shouldn't touch me like that."

            Had he not been holding on to Korra's hand, she would have jumped. Had he not sounded so sleepy, she might've fallen straight off the bed. Instead, in a quivering, alarmed voice, Korra asked, "Touch you like what?"

            "There."

            Clearly he was still sleeping, or hadn't woken up enough to have an idea what he was talking about. Korra could tell that much from his voice alone, the detached dreamy tone that he'd had whenever he'd talked in his sleep. Either way, Korra couldn't make any sense of what he was saying, even when he threaded his fingers between hers and moved her hand around his middle. She understood the motion had significance, but she didn't understand what it was.

            "That's how Opal would touch me," Bolin continued, an edge of smugness in his words, "when she wanted Bolin time."

            Korra was suddenly very, very awake, and she didn't know if she should burst out laughing at the absurdity of what he'd said or yank her hand away from him and run for the hills. Both options seemed oddly overblown for how calm the situation was, even if it made her extraordinarily uncomfortable.

            "I think you ought to wake up for a minute," Korra said with a noticeable effort toward keeping her voice even. "I don't think you..."

            She stopped suddenly and with a finely restrained squeak when Bolin let go of her hand and moved his own back. There was nothing restrained about her alarmed jerk when she felt his fingers brushing the back of her leg.

            "Okay," she said, more firmly now. "Time to wake up."

            "She used to touch me like that," Bolin went on, apparently unfazed by Korra's anxiety, "and I used to touch her like this."

            For a second Korra didn't know what to do. She understood at her very core that whatever was happening right now was wrong on many, many levels, but she'd also never been touched _there_ in _that way_ before, and it set a weird intense tingling from her knees to her navel. Still, it was wrong. It was inappropriate. Even if she enjoyed the touch, this wasn't the time and this wasn't the place--or maybe it _was_ the place. Either way, she couldn't let it go on.

            When Korra sat up and removed Bolin's hand from her leg, he rolled onto his back and eyed her with an expression that was equal parts smug and curious and confused. He looked half asleep, and now she was looking at him straight on for the first time since they'd landed, he looked truly sick and generally awful. There was no way he was lucid.

            "What?" Bolin asked innocently. "What's wrong?"

            "You're not awake," Korra replied firmly. "You're sick. You're asleep. You've got no idea what you're doing right now."

            "Yes I do," he protested, and as he did his eyes dropped from her face. She watched him eyeing her all up and down, and then he rolled and reached over with his other hand and to plant it firmly in the small of her hip, and as he twisted he grimaced a bit.

            Clearly he wasn't awake.

            Very gently, Korra removed his hands from her and dropped them back down on his middle, and she sat fully upright with as serious a look of disapproval as she could muster. "What exactly are you going for, here?"

            A very mischievous grin pulled at the corner of Bolin's mouth, and even with his eyes half-closed Korra could see the way he was still looking at her. "I'd say," he said quietly, "but it wouldn't be very gentlemanly of me."

            "Yeah," Korra said skeptically, "that's what I thought you were going for, and I hate to remind you, but you're _not_ interested. You told me that pretty clearly."

            "I never said that."

            "You definitely implied it. And besides that, you're _drugged_."

            "So? It'll be more fun that way." Bolin reached out to touch Korra again, but she slapped his hand away.

            "Stop." Korra's tone left zero room for argument, even for someone in Bolin's state of mind. She'd snapped the word, she'd made it an imperative, and she made very certain that the look on her face matched the order.

            Bolin stopped, and he looked a little bit hurt and a lot more awake.

            "Now, go back to sleep."

            The way Bolin jammed his head back down onto his pillow reminded Korra of the way Rohan did when he was in trouble or throwing a tantrum. If nothing else, it reassured her that he'd not been thinking straight.

            "You want the blanket?" Korra asked, gentler now.

            "No."

            "I'm going to go for a while," Korra continued, unfazed by Bolin's childish anger. "I'll come check on you again in the morning."

            Bolin didn't respond even as Korra rose and made her way to the door, and while his icy response made her feel just slightly guilty, she recognized just how urgently she needed to be gone. Had she been any less awake, things could've ended very, very badly. Now they would just end in a very long, very cold shower.


	39. Brothers

            Mako left Su's office in a haze of disbelief edged with anger. Though Su had done her very best to explain all that had happened in his absence, there were still questions left unanswered. In fact, there were more questions now than there'd been when he'd started.

            His primary concern had always been Bolin, and Su had been exhaustive in her explanation of his situation. She'd discussed everything from his bending block to his relentless quest to find who'd blown up Ba Sing Se's upper ring to the collapse that stopped him dead in his tracks. Mako understood very clearly the circumstances surrounding the accident, how Bolin had been caught in the midst of the building's collapse and crushed and wounded. That much seemed obvious, and it seemed understandable that it would take some time to recover, too.

            But it didn't explain a lot of other things. It didn't explain the starving. It didn't explain the isolation. It didn't explain the complete shift in his personality, a shift that Mako hadn't yet seen in full but had inferred enough about to be alarmed. The way Su had explained things, the Bolin that Mako had seen in the tunnels--the Bolin that had been hard and angry and cold--was the new normal. He'd been so hard and angry and cold that he'd even hit Suyin, and he'd done it closed-fisted and without much warning. She told him without fanfare. Then she told him that Bolin simply wasn't the same person he'd been when Mako had left except for a few sporadic moments of vulnerability that came when he broke down.

            That had been another of the questions Su hadn't been able to answer: What caused the breakdowns? According to Su, one second he'd be yelling at someone over the stupidest little thing, and the next he'd be sitting on the ground stunned and sad and as full of self-loathing as it was possible to be. Korra had tried to explain it on the journey home, too: Bolin panicked. He got angry, then he got scared, then he panicked, but Mako didn't understand what made Bolin angry or what Bolin could've been afraid of, particularly not when he was in a safe place like Zaofu or Air Temple Island. He didn't understand how Bolin could be afraid of anything when he was surrounded by such capable people as Korra the Avatar, and Asami the genius, and Opal the most supportive and understanding girlfriend a guy could ask for. He didn't understand how Bolin could be afraid of anyone as a lavabender.

            On the whole, Su had been gentle about it all. She'd broached the topic as carefully as Mako would ever have expected out of either of the Beifongs, and she'd been direct but tactful. With that, there were a great many details that she couldn't account for, and Mako the detective was dissatisfied with the holes in her story.

            He reasoned there hadn't been time to cover everything. Mako had done almost as much talking as Su had, trying to fill her in on the Society while also answering the questions she had about where he'd been and what he'd been doing. It was a preliminary briefing, Mako knew, because immediately after he'd explained the generalities, Su had informed him that he'd be needed in Republic City for a personal meeting with Lin,   President Raiko, Firelord Izumi, and a collection of Earth Nation representatives, and that once the arrangements had been made he'd have very little notice before he would have to leave Zaofu.

            That had Mako nervous. There was a lot to take care of and not a lot of time to take care of it.

            Mako left Su's office very late but with every intention of going to speak to his brother, but Asami met him halfway there and diverted him with a proposition he couldn't fight against. She and Opal wanted to speak with him about Bolin much the same way as Su had, except they wanted to be straight about it. They wanted to explain the things that Su wouldn't because she cared too much about maintaining what relationship Mako and Bolin still shared. They wanted to explain what Su couldn't because she didn't know about the truly awful things Bolin had done. They wanted to answer all of Mako's questions head on and without any sugar-coating at all, and Mako couldn't say no to anything that might help him understand the whole picture.

            They met in Opal's room, where Opal invited Asami and Mako to sit on the bed with her to speak more comfortably, and once the two of them had situated, Opal locked the door before joining them. Mako found this a little strange, but decided that she must have done it as a matter of privacy. If Asami's introduction to this conversation had been any indication, some sensitive things would be discussed here.

            Asami began by offering Mako a gentle half smile, a soft smile that reminded him oddly of the smile Su had offered him before she'd begun to speak. Except Asami didn't begin by asking Mako what questions he had. She shot much straighter than that.

            "Your brother is insane."

            "What?"

            "There's no better word for it," Asami continued firmly. "It sounds mean, but it's accurate."

            Mako stammered for a few moments, but he couldn't figure out exactly what he wanted to say. All at once he wanted to argue with her that Bolin couldn't be _insane_ if he was _injured_ , and that Su had explained Bolin's behavior as an unfortunate byproduct of the head trauma.

            Asami silenced him by holding up her hand, and he watched as she and Opal exchanged a look of mutual understanding. Then Asami nodded, and she turned back to Mako.

            "I'm assuming Su told you the basics," she said, gentler now, "that Bo was upset because he thought you'd died and that he lost his bending and all that stuff."

            Mako nodded. He was suddenly too worried to say anything.

            "I also assume she talked to you about the collapse and his injury."

            "She told me that a building fell on him and that he spent a solid week in the hospital."

            "That about sums it up," Asami said with another nod. "First couple days he was pretty much brain-dead and after that he came back slowly. Didn't remember how to play Pai Sho. Couldn't walk to the bathroom. Got confused about where he was and who was around him. Couldn't remember how to add or count or anything like that. I'm still not convinced he can read."

            "What?"

            Asami shook her head. "It's not important. What's important is that he came back and by now most of his injuries have healed."

            Mako wasn't pleased with Asami's dodge, but there wasn't much he could argue, either. He assumed that he'd find out the whole truth eventually, anyway.

            "So I guess it's time for the hard stuff."

            "The hard stuff," Mako repeated stupidly. He'd assumed everything thus far had been the hard stuff already. "What do you mean by that?"

            "I mean all the terrible things that have happened since he came home."

            "Oh."

            Opal shifted very uncomfortably and shot a glance to Asami before saying, "You know where to start, right?"

            "Yeah," Asami said, then turned back to Mako. "There was a day when Lin, Korra, Bo, and I went to question the combustion bender who attacked him. Bolin was in a bad mood anyway--I guess Korra upset him somehow--but he agreed to do the dirty work regardless. Lin thought it'd be good for him to get some of the anger out of his system, but I wondered otherwise. Long story short, he questioned the guy pretty effectively. Bolin threatened in no uncertain terms to drop him into a pool of lava, and he had the pool ready to go and all. It was unnerving, to say the least, because that was really the first time I'd seen him act so..." Asami paused and looked to Opal for help finding an appropriate descriptor.

            "Crazy?" Opal offered hopefully.

            "It was the first time I'd seen him so hostile." It seemed Asami had decided on the word with hesitation. "Well, when Bolin was done, the combustion bender threatened him and obviously Bo didn't like it. Walked back to the guy and decked him so hard in the head that he didn't just knock him out in one hit, he split his hand wide open on the metal plate Lin had used to block the combustion bending. Then he walked straight out of the room. He looked awful. I followed him and within about five minutes he passed out on me."

            "Because he hurt his hand?" Mako asked, confused. "He passed out from the blood?"

            "See, that's what I thought it was at first, too, but it didn't make sense. He's seen blood before without a problem. He kept trying to talk but he wasn't saying any words. He was just making sounds. He seemed really confused, like he didn't recognize me and didn't know where he was. He didn't understand anything I was saying to him, either. Then he dropped right on top of me and faded in and out for the next couple hours while we got him back to my office. Turns out he'd stopped eating and had apparently been thinking about killing himself."

            " _What?_ "

            "I told you this was the hard stuff," Asami replied, unfazed by Mako's sharp reaction. "That night we found out he hadn't eaten anything for... What was it?"

            "Four days," Opal said quietly. "At least."

            "For four days," Asami continued, "and he said that it was because he couldn't keep any food down. Nobody knew because he hadn't been speaking to anyone and barely ever came out of his room. I don't know that I believe him on it, but he did puke after he ate the noodles Su brought, so I don't really know. Either way, he woke up for a couple hours, got into a screaming match with Korra, had a total breakdown, admitted he wanted to die, then passed out again. That's when we decided he needed to come here. Well, Lin and Tenzin and Su decided that. We didn't really have much to do with it. Either way, there was no question about it: Bo needs supervision all the time because without it, there's no telling what he'll do to himself."

            "But..." Mako stammered, a little overwhelmed. "But he..."

            Asami watched Mako with her brow raised, and she waited for a generous time for him to stitch together his thinking. But Mako didn't know what to ask first, nor how to ask it, and eventually he just shook his head in disbelief and looked at his hands.

"So we lied to him about you," Asami continued. "We kept it from him that we thought you might be alive on Lin's orders. She thought it would do more harm than good for us to tell him, just in case it turned out you were actually dead. She didn't want to get his hopes up because he was unstable enough as it was, and I completely understand her point of view. We had no idea what he'd do. So while he came here with Su, we three girls went to check out the Boiling Rock. Whatever, that's not important right now. When we came back, Su verified that you'd visited Lin in Republic City, and we had to come clean to Bolin."

            "But not before Korra came clean to you," Opal muttered, and Asami nodded.

            "Came clean to you about what?"

            Asami shook her head. "I don't want to talk about it. It doesn't matter anymore. The point is that there was some drama and at some point Bo threatened to jump off a roof and was actually walking out the door to do it, or so Korra told me after the fact. Then he didn't say a word to anyone for most of a day." She took a deep breath and sighed it back out. "In the end we came clean to Bolin about you and he wigged. Lavabent twenty or thirty thousand yuans worth of damage into the metalbending arena. You have to have seen it. We all figured he'd be upset about the matter, but he was well beyond upset, obviously. When Opal tried to apologize, he..."

            Mako looked up when Asami paused, and he watched her watching Opal. Asami wore an expression of sympathy and regret, and Opal's eyes had rimmed with tears again.

            "He grabbed me," Opal finished, and Mako couldn't break his gaze away from her. She rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands. "He grabbed me by the wrist and yelled straight in my face. He called me a bitch, told me never to speak to him again, then threw me across the room. I've still got the bruise where I fell."

            All Mako could do was blink stupidly at her. There was no way she was lying about it because the look on her face and the tears in her eyes were too real. The pain in her voice was real. And then Opal stood and presented Mako with her hip. She pulled her shirt up a few inches, pulled the waist of her trousers down, and looked down at herself.

            "It actually looks a lot better today," she remarked absently, but it didn't look good to Mako at all. Opal must have read the disgust and disbelief on his face, because when she noticed Mako gaping, she pulled her clothes back into place and sat back down on the bed. When she spoke again the waver in her voice had gone away completely. Her tone had turned very clinical. "Those aren't the only bruises he gave me."

            Over the next few minutes, Opal pulled at her clothes to show Mako the evidence. She tugged at the collar of her shirt to show him the bruise running from the nape of her neck to her shoulder. Then she pulled at her sleeves to show the ugly marks on her wrists. In afterthought, she rolled her left sleeve up as far as she could to reveal a nasty cut on her forearm. He'd caught glimpses of these things on their return trip but had assumed that they'd come as a result of the fighting in Fire Fountain City. He could never have imagined that they'd come from Bolin.

            "Let... Let me see that..." Mako asked, and he motioned toward Opal's wrist. She sat on the bed and obliged, placing her hand in his, and Mako pulled her sleeve back up to examine the bruise as thoroughly as he dared.

            He could see finger marks. It was an old bruise that was well on the better side of healing, but he could see the marks as clear as day.

            When Mako let go of Opal's wrist, he looked at her apologetically, but when he opened his mouth to say so, she shook her head.

            "It's not your fault," she said. "Don't worry about it."

            "But _why_?" Mako asked. "Why did he..."

            "Well, this wrist was from when he threw me, and so was the hip. The other wrist and my shoulder..." Opal trailed off, and Mako noticed that the quivering had come back to her voice with the last few words.

            "He threatened her," Asami finished for Opal. "When we decided that we were coming to Fire Fountain City to get you. I guess Bolin didn't like the idea of Opal going with because he came in here, slammed her against the wall, and threatened to..." Asami trailed off, too, and she looked down and shook her head. Mako knew better than to press the matter: He could make the assumption easily enough from the girls' body language alone. "I don't really want to say it," Asami finished at last. "You can use your imagination. Not much else a guy can threaten a girl with when he's got her pinned on the floor."

            "And my arm was from when we were in the tunnels, when we rescued you," Opal finished timidly, and she touched her hand to the wound. "I don't think it was on purpose. I don't think he meant to hurt me, at least not that time. He was trying to get me out of the way and didn't have enough time to be gentle about it. He kicked a rock up underneath me and I landed wrong."

            There were a few seconds of silence after Opal finished her statement, seconds that Mako contemplated asking more questions. There were so many to ask now, and he didn't know where to begin. Was that why she had locked the door? To keep Bolin out?

Instead, Mako settled on saying, "It's the same way he did with your mom, when he hit her."

            "He _what?_ "

            "He... You didn't know? She didn't tell you?"

            Opal shook her head and glanced at Asami for support, but Asami looked just as shocked. Neither one of the girls seemed able to say anything, and Mako genuinely felt sorry for them. He felt guilty that Su hadn't told them, but Su had made no mention of it being a secret.

            "I don't know why she didn't tell you, but he hit her. He knocked her down, but she knocked him down right back. Doesn't seem like he did any real damage except for shaking her up a little bit. She wasn't hurt, and the way she talked about it she'd kind of been expecting it. I guess he flat out _told her_ that he'd been feeling like hitting her whenever she tried to help him. He warned her. I guess it was inevitable."

            "When?" Opal asked.

            "Before you left to come get me, I guess. She was pretty vague."

            Opal looked mutinous, and Mako wasn't sure how to feel about it. If Bolin and Opal's relationship was already on the rocks, her knowing about Su certainly wouldn't make things any better. He didn't want to be the reason they called it quits for good, if they hadn't already done so.

            For a few seconds, Mako worked hard to find words that might lessen the blow, but Asami didn't give him the chance before she changed the subject.

            "Korra and I talked," Asami said. "While you were in with Su, she and I talked to make sure that we had our stories straight. We needed to make sure that everyone was on the same page, and I'm doing the same for you right now, okay?"

            Mako nodded.

            "I want you to keep quiet for this. Can you do that?"

            He nodded again, except now he was very, very nervous. Asami hadn't requested him to be quiet before, not ever, and if she hadn't asked him to do so for something as serious as Bolin hitting and threatening Opal, he couldn't imagine what would prompt her to do it now.

            "Bolin killed people."

            The sentence didn't catch Mako as far off guard as he'd have thought it might. Mako had seen the commander fall before they'd lifted off from Baihe Island. He'd heard the anguished screaming of people still in the city when he and the girls had been running away. He'd seen the blood-soaked rock in the corridor outside his cell. He'd seen Bolin covered from head to toe in flesh and mud. The assumption had to be made that Bolin had killed at least a few people because he was the only one who could earthbend.

            It was the way Asami had made the statement that caught Mako off guard. She'd sounded afraid, but the tone had been subtle. Asami had always been good at holding back her feelings in favor of sounding objective, especially in circumstances such as these: She'd always been good at making sure important information was conveyed as objectively as possible. This situation seemed no different, except that she was having noticeable difficulty keeping the emotion in check.

            "Korra and I counted something like fifty people after it was all said and done, but it could be more. I guess that after he ditched us in the tunnels he was chucking lava at anything that moved."

            "I... I don't understand..."

            "He was panicked from the start," Asami said, and Mako saw Opal nodding sagely in agreement before she dropped her forehead onto her hands. "Straight from the outset. We weren't even in the city yet when he started to freak out. When the first combustion bender fired at us he froze completely. In all the time I've known Bolin I've never seen him look so afraid, and we've been through a lot. But, see, when he panics he loses control. I can't say for sure because I wasn't there, but I'd wager a guess that when he found Korra and the two of them were making their way to the bison they were probably under pretty heavy fire from combustion benders and firebenders and lightning benders, and maybe the firebending and lightning bending didn't impact him that much, but the combustion bending had to. If I had to judge by the way he reacted the first time around, the combustion bending triggers something in Bolin's head that makes him... Panic..."

            "He was probably remembering when he was attacked," Opal said wisely, her face still in her hands. "I mean, he was attacked twice by the same combustion bender, and that was the last time he'd dealt with combustion before we went to Fire Fountain City. It only makes sense that hearing and seeing combustion bending reminded him of the collapse."

            Asami shrugged haplessly. "Makes sense to me, too."

            "So," Mako interjected, a bit tentatively himself, "it's like how Korra was. After she was poisoned."

            Asami and Opal both looked to him with faces screwed up in confusion, as if he'd said something ridiculous.

            "It is," Mako insisted, "or at least it sounds like it is, kind of. Their situations aren't exactly the same. But if you remember, Korra couldn't go into the spirit world and she couldn't use the Avatar State because every time she tried she had these weird flashback things that freaked her out. It sounds like Bolin is having some similar issue, except he gets freaked out by combustion bending."

            Opal and Asami looked at each other, surprised now, and Mako shrugged at them when they looked back at him.

            "It makes sense," Mako said. "A person gets traumatized by something bad enough, they're going to freak out when they see that thing again. And if you add in to that, you know, whatever..." he paused as the phrase stuck in his throat. "Add in whatever _damage_ there was to his brain and you can't really blame him for being afraid."

            "You're right," Asami said. "But how do you fix it?"

            Mako shook his head sadly. "I don't know."

            "I guess the take away from all of this is that you need to be prepared," said Asami after a few seconds silence. "Whatever your expectations were coming home, you need to lower the bar. If my guess is correct, Bo won't talk to you the same way he won't talk to either of us. He won't come out of his room if he doesn't have to. He won't eat unless someone forces him to. And if you get too close," Asami paused and then she punched her right hand into her left palm. " _Bam_. Just like that."

            "He'll hit me?"

            "He'll hit anything that walks, apparently. Which is to say, if he's not taking whatever issues he's got out on himself, he's taking it out on the rest of us."

            With an enormous sigh, Mako nodded and he stood. "I'm going to go see him. Where's he staying?"

            Opal perked up at this for the first time in a while, and the motion stopped Mako dead, curious. She looked concerned.

            "He's not going to be awake," Opal said, "and if he is awake he's not going to be able to talk to you."

            "What? Why?"

            "The healers put him under."

            At that, Mako bristled a bit. Here he'd been rescued and had been within twenty feet of his brother for something like three or four days now, and the two of them hadn't exchanged a single word. Here he'd spent the last how many weeks convinced that Bolin was dead only to find him very much alive but gravely injured, and now the slap in the face was that Bolin wouldn't or couldn't speak to him.

            "I'll take my chances," Mako said. He tempered the budding anger carefully. He didn't want to upset anyone any more than they already were, but he didn't want to leave any room for argument. "Where is he?"

            "If you go outside this building, he's three down that way," Opal said, and she pointed vaguely. "He's got almost the whole building to himself, but his bedroom is the first door once you're inside."

            Mako nodded his thanks. “You guys ought to go talk to Su and make sure everyone knows everything that’s happened. If she’s been keeping things from you and you’ve been keeping things from her, it’s probably good to make sure everyone’s caught up.” He said the words thoughtfully, and then left the room without any argument from the girls.

            He didn't know why he expected there to be someone in Bolin's room besides Bolin at such a ridiculously late hour. Maybe it was because all anyone talked about was how he needed supervision and how the healers had been at his side for virtually every second since they'd landed. But he was very much alone except for Pabu, and just as Opal had suggested he'd be, he was asleep. Or unconscious. Or both.

            Since his rescue, every time Mako had looked at Bolin his stomach dropped out and a deep sadness swelled in his chest. Now he was so close, Mako's legs felt like they'd go out from underneath him.

            Bolin looked pitiful. He _was_ pitiful, and it seemed there was nothing that Mako could do about it because if Asami, Opal, and Su were to be believed, they had already tried everything they knew to do, and still they couldn't reach him.

            For a while, Mako leaned against the wall beside the bed and watched Bolin sleep the same way he'd watched Bolin sleep when they were children, and he thought about Bolin the same way that he'd thought about Bolin back then, too. Until such a point as Bolin was capable of caring for himself, everything Mako did would be geared toward making sure he was okay. Everything Mako did would focus on helping him to recover and get back to the way he was before.

            Even though nothing was there, Mako rubbed at his eyes and drew a very long breath. Now wasn't the time to feel bad. It wasn't the time to feel guilty that he hadn't been there when Bolin needed him. Now was the time to prepare himself the same way he'd prepared himself when their parents had died. Now was the time to focus on making himself the most capable person he could be so that no matter what happened, he could drag Bolin through it even if Bolin didn't want to go.

            Mako had done it before, and though the prospect of becoming the Mako he'd once been was less than ideal, it was what had to be done. Yes, Asami and Opal and Korra and Su and everyone else who had become a part of their lives had tried to help Bolin through whatever funk he'd fallen into, but they hadn't helped him through the original funk. Their relationship with Bolin wasn't the same as Mako's; they couldn't be the same.

            It didn't matter how much time the brothers spent apart because so much of their early lives had been spent together, and there was no discounting that. Mako had seen Bolin at his lowest, stupidest, most vulnerable points, and Bolin had seen the same of Mako. They had lived through the worst case possible in virtually every way, because not only were they forced to keep themselves alive without the benefit of a home or money or parental guidance, they'd had to do it while figuring out such frightening things as grieving and child exploitation and puberty and triad hierarchy, and it hadn't always been pretty.

            Mako couldn't help a grin because whenever he considered all the problems they'd endured, he couldn't help thinking about all the stupid things he'd seen Bolin do and all the times he'd shamelessly laughed at Bolin's ineptitude. Even now, Mako truly believed that no person had ever been less suited to life on the streets than his brother, but that was partly Mako's fault because Mako had done everything he could do to shelter Bolin from the truth.

            There was no hiding from it now. The truth was unavoidable, and it was big and scary and apparently a little bit violent. And it was sleeping soundly right in front of him.

            The strangest part was that Bolin didn't _look_ insane. He looked like Bolin, albeit sick and pale and thin. If he hadn't heard from Asami and Su that Bolin wasn't himself, Mako might've just thought he'd come down with something and been slow to get over it. He might've thought the injuries were what had caused it because there were so many little bruises and cuts all over him, and because there were a few alarmingly large wounds, too, and no matter how much they were covered by wrapping and clothes, Mako remembered how awful they had looked. 

            Mako sighed, and then he nodded. Priority number one was to get Bolin back in shape as soon as possible. Priority number two was to prepare himself for the meeting with Beifong, Raiko, and the Firelord. Beyond that, he'd have to play it by ear, and since Bolin was clearly in no position to be reasoned with right now, Mako left.

            He needed some sleep and he needed some food, and he needed to get his own head straight before he'd ever have a chance to get through to Bolin.

 

*****

 

It was weird how much Bolin remembered, because usually the panic made him forget. Usually the cycle left him with nothing but regret, but now there was just the void.

            He knew in part that its opening had been helped along by the healers, whether they had meant to or not. He remembered how they'd sedated him: He'd waked to find these strange people crowded around him, pressing against his ribs so hard that his vision went blurry and his throat closed up. Even through the collapse and the aftermath, he'd never felt a pain so excruciating as the one they were inflicting on him at that moment, and Bolin knew that he'd have died if he hadn't gotten away.

            He didn't know where the strength had come from--probably the panic, if he was honest--but he did remember punching out at the healers and kicking at them until they retreated, and then he'd jumped onto the bed, pressed his back into the corner, and torn a hunk of lava from he didn't even know where. He'd chucked it at them blindly before half a dozen metal clan guards barreled in and restrained him. Bolin hadn't even known where they'd come from. He hadn't remembered them being in the room. But they'd grabbed his arms and his legs, and one of them had grabbed him around the chest and held him so tightly that it stole his breath away. Before Bolin had had the chance to fight back someone had stabbed him in the thigh. He remembered the frenzy that came over him then and how he'd strained to pull away from the guards, and then someone stabbed him again, and between the pain in his ribs and the strange, sudden heaviness in his limbs, he couldn't fight back anymore.

            When the guards let him go he'd crumpled in a heap atop the bedclothes, still conscious but utterly incapable of moving, and just when he thought that things couldn't be more terrifying he saw Opal staring at him from across the room. He remembered the anxiety washing over him as the healers blocked her from his view, a thousand thoughts of what she must think of him rushing through his head like a flood. Even through the sedation his body had responded to the panic--his breathing quickened and the cold sweat came and his eyes darted about all uncontrolled--but he couldn't move.

            He heard them talking about him, and he heard them reassuring Opal that everything was all right, and that was the last thing he remembered before the third and final prick covered his consciousness in a blanket of hazy warmth and calm quiet, and he slept without dreaming.

            Bolin woke occasionally to Opal's voice, and though she sounded very far away he could understand her clearly enough. Once she asked him if he could hear her and once she asked him if he was all right, and when he didn't respond to either of the questions she sighed sadly and spoke about things that Bolin didn't want to hear and couldn't have helped with anyway.

            Opal talked about what had happened on Baihe Island and how afraid it had made her, and how when she was watching it all happen she was certain that they were all going to die. She said that it made her realize how stupid all the fighting and all the drama had been.

            Then she told him that she forgave him for everything he'd done and that she hoped from the bottom of her heart that someday he'd be able to forgive her, too. Then she talked about the future she wanted to have once this whole mess had sorted out, and how she wanted him to be part of it.

            Even in the weird, cold-but-hot haze he'd fallen into, Bolin wasn't sure that he could ever be a part of it. He wasn't sure that he wanted to.

            Through it all, he kept trying to make words but they seldom came out and were never coherent. He kept trying to tell her to stop talking and to leave him alone and to find something else to do with her life, but all that came out of him was indistinct mumbling because no matter how much he concentrated on speaking, there wasn't enough strength in his body to fight through the sedation. Every bit of energy in him seemed to be spent on shivering and sweating and fighting to keep his mind from giving in to the panic. But eventually there wasn't enough strength to stay awake, and he fell asleep again.

            This time he did dream. He dreamed about the future Opal had discussed and he dreamed about how whole he'd felt when she was close to him. It was altogether pleasant, but when he next woke and remembered reality the void opened wider and all the happiness he'd imagined disappeared.

            Korra was there that time, and he overheard what must have been the tail end of her and Opal's conversation, and when he heard Korra suggest that Opal should go join Asami in a conversation with Mako, he wanted desperately to intervene. He knew exactly what would be discussed, and even if Bolin hated Mako and even if he tried to hate Opal and Asami, he didn't want Mako to know any more than he had to. He didn't want Opal and Asami to tell Mako the terrible things he'd done and said to them all, how he'd hit them and screamed at them and bent at them. He didn't want them to tell Mako about how he'd been acting all depressed and ridiculous. He didn't want them to tell, because Bolin understood without a doubt that if Mako found out about any of it he'd be relentless in his efforts to set things right. That was simply how Mako operated.

            He couldn't make the noises he wanted to before Opal left the room. He'd been too caught up in worrying about it all to realize that she'd even stood. It wasn't until she touched his shoulder with her freezing cold hand that the feverish fog eased up around his mind, but then she was gone, and then he was alone and things were quiet, and there was little left to do but give in to the haze and hope that the next time he woke the unnatural exhaustion would be gone.

            The morning came without his ever knowing it, and the next time Bolin opened his eyes the room was bright with sunlight and alive with people. It took a few deliberate, hard blinks for his vision to clear up, and when he looked about, he understood that the healers had come back and so had some of the guards. For a second he contemplated an apology, but when he opened his mouth to say so, the words wouldn't come out.

            It didn't take long for them to notice he was awake, and this time the younger of the two healers approached with a degree of caution. Bolin didn't even look at him. There was no point in engaging.

            The healer clearly didn't agree.

            In a much-needed and much-appreciated gesture, they explained what had happened the day prior and even apologized for being rough. They proceeded to explain everything they did whenever they did it, whether it was applying healing spirit waters to his arm and leg or checking his ribs for any additional damage he might've inflicted in his flailing. They told him before they touched him, they told him when it would hurt, and they were almost always right.

            Bolin was genuinely surprised when they told him the extent of the damages, that he'd come down with some kind of minor infection from the wound on his arm and that he'd somehow managed to crack three of his ribs in the disaster on Baihe Island, but over time what weird delusional fog remained on his brain dissipated, and he put the pieces together easily enough. Opal had done his ribs, not Baihe Island, and he felt stupid for not seeing that clearly from the get go. And without the benefit of healing water on the return trip from Fire Fountain City, Korra had helped him clean the wound on his arm and leg in some stupid backwoods creek. There was no telling what kind of garbage had been floating around in it, and in the end Bolin felt very, very surprised that an infection and a fever had been the only issues he'd had as a result.

            After they had finished explaining the details, Bolin felt a little bit of self-respect come back to him. When he'd lashed out at the healers he'd been afraid, sick, and in a place he hadn't recognized at first, and the tiniest bit of relief rose in his chest when he thought about how much better today was over yesterday.

            But then the healers had bathed him, and the only thing that kept him from losing _all_ of his dignity was that he swore at them fiercely and threatened to start lavabending at them again if they touched him anywhere below the armpits, though in the end he did cave in and allow them to clean his feet. And just when Bolin thought it couldn't get any worse, they'd forced him to eat.

            Though Bolin resisted at first out of sheer inflexible habit, they'd threatened him with all manner of generally awful things to get him to relent. He hadn't cared so much when they said they'd sedate him again because even though it had scared the life out of him at first, he'd gotten a decent amount of dreamless sleep out of it and it had numbed his ability to reflect on the horrible things he'd done. When they realized sedation was futile, they threatened to lock him in a sanitarium, but Bolin had laughed derisively in their faces and asked them how being confined to his room was any different, and he very sarcastically and very crudely invited them to carry him away on the spot if being in a psychiatric facility meant he wouldn't have old ugly men threatening to handle his private parts in the name of _cleanliness_. He'd only relented when they threatened to waterbend the stuff into him, and even then he hadn't given in until the elder of the two actually pulled the disgusting-looking slop out of the bowl and prepared to water whip it straight down his throat.

            It had been so chunky and putrid that Bolin had gagged three times before it was gone, and even after the healers verified he'd drank it all and left him alone in the silence, he found himself contemplating a few fingers down his throat if only to make the nausea go away. But he sat there stubbornly, his back propped against his pillows and his arms crossed over his chest, and he clenched his jaw and stared holes into the blanket until his stomach settled and the desire to puke turned into a weird and general discomfort.

            Without the healers to distract him, Bolin's mind began turning back to Baihe Island. He did everything he could think of to keep it from going there: He struggled unsuccessfully to remember the stupidest, catchiest song he'd ever heard on the radio. He tried to imagine life without brain injury. He tried to remember what Opal looked like without clothes. But in the end, everything he thought about made him feel guilty for being such a failure, and his mind went anyway. And then he felt worse.

            He'd known the whole time that he'd killed the firebenders. There was no running from the truth. No matter how hard Bolin wanted to deny what he'd done he couldn't, and even if he somehow managed to convince himself that it hadn't happened, there were witnesses who could very easily contradict him. Opal and Asami had seen him crush the people in the hallway. Korra had seen him slinging tendrils of lava at anything that moved. She'd seen him using his earthbending to punt three or four of them into the air at once, and she'd seen them land and not move again the same way Bolin had seen them. And even if he gave in to the denial completely and forced himself to believe otherwise, she'd been less than five feet away from him when he'd crushed that kid firebender in the tunnels, slammed his head into the ground, promised him mercy, then buried him alive with a wave of molten rock.

            The nausea came back.

            There had been so many, and he'd dispatched them in so many ways he'd never imagined possible. It seemed that everything he'd done on Baihe Island had been lethal in one way or another, even when he'd not expected it. He'd never truly believed the lava would respond to his call in the end when he'd slung the shards of obsidian at the enemies who'd been tailing Korra so closely, because it had been a move of blind desperation. He certainly hadn't expected the shards to rip holes through the flesh and lodge in the rocks beyond. He hadn't expected there to be so much blood.

            When Bolin thought about that, the soles of his feet tingled the same way as they had on the way home. It was the same tingle that had overwhelmed every part of him that had been touched by the fluids from other bodies, and it came on so intensely that Bolin panicked and threw the covers off of his legs and scoured every inch of his body for remnants of blood. There was nothing there, of course, not even between his toes and not caked beneath his nails. There was nothing except his own pale, crawling skin and the memory of what it had felt like to have his outsides covered with other people's insides. 

            There was so little warning before he vomited that all Bolin could do was lean over the side of the bed and hope that Pabu wasn't laying on the floor, and in the seconds between his sudden motion and the initial bout of retching, he knew it was going to hurt.

            There was no way he could have known how badly it was going to hurt.

            Just the motion of bending over set his ribs to searing again, but the first heave made him certain that he would either pass out and drop off the bed face first into a pile of his own sick or that his whole ribcage would come flying out of his mouth along with the contents of his stomach. Neither happened, but a dull pain wrapped around his back and stabbed him in the spine so fiercely that it made him retch again, until in the end there was nothing more he could do but lay there, profoundly dizzy, with his very sweaty forehead pressed into the crook of his very sweaty elbow and pray that there was nothing left in his stomach to come out.

            As he lay there staring at the gray-orange sludge on the floor and wishing desperately that the room would stop spinning, the fear came on. It wasn't panic as he had experienced it before. It wasn't so intense and it didn't make his body do strange, psychotic things without his ever meaning to. This was the same fear he'd had the night he'd collapsed, when he'd been staring at the results of Su's noodles half-digested in Asami's office trash can and understood that solid foods were officially out of the question. But now it was liquid foods. Now it was any food at all.

            Bolin shook his head at himself. It couldn't be that way. He'd been living on liquids for weeks. It must have been the fever or the infection that had done it to him, or the fact that he'd not eaten in so long and his stomach didn't know how to process the sudden influx. It was the pain in his ribs. That had to be what it was.

            But the nausea had hit him well before his ribs had started hurting so badly again. Yes, they'd never really stopped aching, but the pain had never been so intense that it'd made him sick, not until he'd already _been_ sick. The sick came first, then the pain, then the sick because of the pain. His stomach had rejected the food. There was no other explanation.

            Weak and afraid, Bolin pushed himself back onto the bed and collapsed against his pillows before he draped his arm over his eyes. As he waited for the spinning to stop, Bolin came to the same conclusion he'd always come to: Somehow, he was going to die. Whether it was from the injuries, the pain, his inability to eat, or some horrible thing he did to himself, if something very drastic didn't change very quickly, he wasn't going to make it out of Zaofu alive. Whether he wanted to or not, it seemed his body had made the decision for him.

            Bolin didn't know what time it was when he finally mustered the nerve to try and move. He wasn't sure why it would matter anyway. It didn't matter how long ago he'd stopped being sick because he still felt awful, and no matter how much time passed by it didn't seem he'd ever see improvement. There was no sense lying around waiting for things to change, because it was just as likely he'd be sick and miserable in the bed as it was that he'd be sick and miserable on his feet.

            Besides, he needed to talk to Su.

            It was with deliberate caution that he planted his feet on the floor and pushed himself up, and he spent some time standing there over his pile of sick with his hands on the bed, waiting for the spinning to stop again and hoping he didn't fall over. But he didn't fall over and the spinning lessened with time, and Bolin set out tentatively for the door.

            Bolin made his way across what remained of the courtyard he'd liquefied and toward Su's office, and as he walked he admired the speed at which the repairs were being completed. Already the cooled lava rock had been removed and the ground underneath had been turned. It seemed that they were marking out areas for decoration and walkways and general landscaping, because when Bolin strode past, workers were outlining sections of ground in colored paints and cordoning off others.

            Looking at it made him feel guilty all over again.

            It never occurred to Bolin that Su might not be alone until he'd already knocked and entered the room without a reply, but in the two seconds between pushing on the door and seeing Su busy with something at her desk, notably alone, Bolin felt the anxiety bubbling. He stood in the doorway for a few seconds, not because he expected Su to say something, but because he suddenly recognized that his fear of interacting with Korra, Mako, Asami, and Opal had gotten out of hand.

            "Just a second, I'll be right--"

            Su froze in the middle of her very clerical greeting, and when Bolin glanced sheepishly up at her he noticed how surprised she looked. Then he dropped his eyes back to the floor, closed the door quietly, and made his way to her couches. He sat down heavily, folded his hands between his knees, and stared at the ground.

            Bolin wasn't surprised to hear Su scrambling to get out from behind her desk--it sounded like she smashed her knee into the wood in her haste--and as she clambered over to him he heard the concern in her voice.

            "Bolin! What are you doing out of bed? Why... Are you okay?"

            She didn't sit on the couch opposite as Bolin might've expected her to have done, and she didn't take a seat beside him, either. Instead, Su plopped down on the edge of the table in between. He'd not expected to be so close to someone so soon, at least not in a physical capacity, and the moment she took her seat he wanted to pull away.

            He didn't know why he wanted to recoil from her. He forced himself to stay still.

            "How are you feeling?" Su kept going. It seemed she'd never stop with the _concerned mother_ routine and already it was grating on him. She pressed her wrist against his forehead and drew it back quickly. "Still not over it, I guess."

            As he stared at his hands, Bolin suddenly regretted ever coming here. Su didn't know what he'd done, not unless Korra, Asami, or Opal had told her, and there was no way they'd had enough time to discuss everything. There was no way Su would keep treating him so kindly if she knew how many people he'd slaughtered. It didn't matter, though, not really. Bolin knew how many people he'd slaughtered, and even if the first time he'd done it had been something of an accident, he'd been very deliberate thereafter. He'd meant to do everything he'd done. It didn't matter that he'd done it in order to survive.

            More than anything, he regretted that he'd come home. Seeing Su there all furrow-browed and interested in his well-being made his insides hurt more than the puking had, because Bolin knew that he was going to be the first thing on her mind until such a time as he’d recovered. But he wouldn't recover. He knew he wouldn't. He wouldn't let himself. He'd killed people. He didn't deserve to recover.

            For a second, Bolin contemplated rising and walking from the room without saying a word. He was so conflicted now that he wasn't sure he could follow through, but then Su put her hand gently on his arm and thumbed at his hand and waited with an air of expectancy for him to say something.

            "I need to leave," Bolin said at last and in a voice so quiet that Su leaned forward and tilted her ear toward him, confused.

            "I can help you back to your room if you need," she said once it had registered. "Did you just want to walk around a little bit?"

            "No," Bolin said, more forcefully this time, "you don't get it. I need to _leave_. I can't stay here anymore."

            There. It was out. He'd said what he'd been contemplating saying since before he'd left for Baihe Island. He'd made up his mind back then that he'd either die on the journey or leave when he returned home, and since he'd been too stupid to let himself keel over or be struck with a random bolt of combustion or lightning, he had to leave. He had to spare everyone the trouble of dealing with him, especially now that fatalities were involved.

            He grimaced at the thought. Once news got out and spread around the city, he'd be a pariah. He already was one.

            "Sweetheart, what are you talking about?" Su said. Though her voice had softened, the pressure of her thumb on the back of his hand increased. It was nerves and Bolin knew it. He'd been too blunt. "You're fine here."

            Bolin shook his head despite himself. To keep himself from the temptation of looking up, he closed his eyes. "I need to get out of the city."

            "But why?"

            Suddenly Bolin found his jaw clenching hard, and he pulled his hands out of Su's to rub nervously about his forehead and eyes. His face felt unreasonably warm and his hands had gone all frigid. They felt good.

            "I just need to leave."

            Bolin felt stupid that it was all he could say, but there was no way for him to explain his reasoning without spilling his secret to Su. He couldn't come out straight and tell her that he didn't want to stay in a place where he might someday be confronted with the fact that he'd murdered a few dozen people in cold blood while trying to save his brother who apparently had fallen into such good graces with his captors that he'd opted to return to captivity over coming home. He couldn't admit that he'd lost his mind so completely in his panicking that he'd pitched lava at real, living people with abandon. He couldn't come out and tell Su that he hated himself more than he'd ever hated himself before and that he didn't feel like he deserved the roof she'd put over his head or the food she was trying to put in him. He couldn't tell her that he thought he was a waste of skin and that his being in the city was stealing precious oxygen from people who deserved it more than he could ever hope to do.

            Su didn't say anything for the whole time that Bolin thought. She must have been watching his face twisting around between looks of regret and fear and hate. It was weird how the emotions fought against one another, and how there was no chance that any one of them would come out over the others. It was weird how the void let those emotions through at the most inconvenient times, only to suck them back in when they might actually be welcome.

            "If you're not happy here, I can see about sending you back to Republic City," Su said at last, just as quietly as Bolin had. He credited her for the neutrality in her voice. If she'd sounded startled when he'd arrived, she'd masterfully covered it up now. She put her hands on the outsides of his knees and went quiet for a time that she must have been thinking. "You'll have to stay here until you're healed up, though. I'm not letting you go anywhere with broken bones."

            "I don't want to go back to Republic City," Bolin replied.

            Su was quiet again, and Bolin could feel the confusion fighting against the concern inside of her. "Then where do you want to go?"

            Bolin grasped at his forehead, a little bit desperately. He hadn't thought this conversation out thoroughly enough, and now that he was in the thick of it he felt enormously stupid for ever considering speaking to Su. Of course she was going to ask him questions. There was no way she'd let him waltz into her office and agree to let him leave Zaofu without any other information. He was surprised she'd let him leave his room after everything she'd seen him do since he'd arrived, never mind the things she _hadn't_ seen.

            "I want to go away. I want to disappear."

            It was the wrong thing to say. There was nothing subtle about the shift in Su's emotions. The moment the words had come out of Bolin's mouth he felt her hands tense up around his knees, he felt her grip tighten and the slightest quickening in her breathing. She must have misunderstood him. She must have thought that _going away_ was code. She must have thought that _to disappear_ meant dying, and while Bolin certainly wouldn't have argued if he was suddenly struck by a meteor out of the blue, it wasn't what he'd meant in this case. All the same, he wasn't going to clarify. It didn't really matter either way. She wasn't entirely wrong.

Within a few moments, Su calmed again and resumed brushing her thumbs over his legs. She must have thought it to be more comforting than it actually was, but again, Bolin wasn't going to argue. If this kind of contact made Su feel better about the whole situation, he'd let her touch him.

            "I can't let you go anywhere," Su said. "I don't know why you want to leave or why you're uncomfortable here, but I can't let you go anywhere. You belong here. You need to be here with your friends and your family. You're injured."

            "I've been _injured_ for like, two months, Su," Bolin snapped. "You'd think if I was going to get better while I was here, I'd have done it by now."

            "Not if you keep running all over the world before you're ready. Not if you get into fights. Definitely not if you're not taking care of yourself," Su replied, just as sharply. "Korra told me everything."

            Bolin's stomach lurched violently and he felt very much like he'd throw up all over again. He bristled and waited for Su to scold him or tell him how horrible of a person he was. He waited for her to make him feel justified in his self-loathing. He waited for her to admit that she hated him the same way that he hated himself.

            "She told me you weren't eating again," Su continued. "She told me you hadn't eaten since you left."

            "What else did she tell you?" Bolin said, his voice low and hoarse now. His whole body tensed. He waited.

            "She told me that you took the night watch so you could keep what you were doing a secret, and she told me that you would panic when you woke up yesterday. Apparently she was right on both counts."

            Bolin looked up suddenly, his brow knit with a deep confusion. His hands fell limp back into his lap. Korra hadn't told her? Clearly if Korra had said something about the killing, Su would have made it clear that she knew. There was no way Su wouldn't make the connection between Bolin murdering people and his need to run away.

            "Did you eat today?"

            Bolin nodded stupidly.

            Su smiled at him, and it was a genuine and gentle smile, a proud smile, and she took his hands in hers again. "I'm glad to hear that."

            "It didn't stay down."

            The smile went away at once. "What do you mean?"

            "I mean I puked about ten minutes after I ate it. Okay, maybe it was twenty, I don't know. Point is that it didn't stay down so if you want to get really technical about it I still haven't--"

            "Why?"

            Bolin shook his head again except this time the motion came a bit more manically. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them again his vision darted about the room in complete confusion and incredulity. He felt the anxiety welling up again.

            "That has nothing to do with any of this!" The words exploded out of him before he could stop them. "Who cares if I don't eat? That has nothing to do with why I'm even in here!" He tried to pull his hands away from Su, but she held them firmly. "I want to leave! I want to get out of this stupid place and away from all of you and--"

            "Calm down."

            "No!"

            Su sighed very deeply, and at that sound Bolin dropped his head down in submission. He'd snapped again and he couldn't even pinpoint the trigger, but now he recognized the explosiveness in his emotions for what it was, he breathed slowly and carefully. He worked hard to force it all back in.

            When Su touched his face Bolin thought he'd burst into tears, but he didn't.

            "Listen to me, okay?" Su said. She didn't pause long enough for Bolin to argue. "I hear what you're saying and I understand that you might not be happy here right now. There's nothing I want more than for you to be happy, but I can't let you leave here until you're healthy. I can't let you leave here until I know you're going to be safe, and right now I'm really not convinced. You need to stay here and heal. Now, I don't know what happened while you were gone that's made you so... Afraid... Of being here, but I want to help you."

            "You _can't_."

            "Then who can?"

            "No one." Bolin said the words with as much finality as he could muster, and once again he wrenched his hands away from Su's. This time he didn't use them to hide his face, though, he just didn't want her touching him anymore. He didn't want to be in this room with her any more.

            He stood up, and when the room started spinning again he tensed.

            "Sweetie, when are you going to talk to someone?" Su said in a begging way. "When are you going to let someone try to--"

            "Quit calling me that!" Bolin hadn't been able to stop the words coming out of him, but he did manage to keep himself from screaming them. "Stop calling me sweetie and honey and all those stupid... Stupid names!"

            "But I've always called you--"

            "I don't care!" This time he couldn't keep his voice from rising. "I don't care what you used to call me! I don't care how you used to treat me! Nothing is the same as it used to be! You can't treat me the same way as you used to anymore because I'm not the same guy I used to be anymore! I'm not even the same guy I was last week! All I want is to leave this stupid city and all you can do is say that you can't let me go!"

            "Do you see how you're acting right now?" Su asked gently. She didn't stand up. She didn't move at all. She just watched him. "The way you're acting right now is why I can't let you leave."

            "You don't even want me to leave my own room! You don't want me to leave my bed! You won't let me make my own decisions!"

            "I let you make your own decisions when you can."

            "You _drugged me!_ "

            Su looked very skeptical now, her brow raised sharply and her lips pursed tightly together. She thought on this for a second before she spoke again, and the gentle tone had a shade more deliberateness to it. "I had nothing to do with that decision. That was the decision of the healers who were caring for you, and they only chose to do it because you lavabent at them and they couldn't get you to calm down. They were worried you were going to hurt yourself. Don't blame me because you had to deal with the consequences of what you did."

            And there it was. No matter what happened he would always have to deal with the consequences for what he'd done, and that was what frightened Bolin the most. He'd killed people. What were the consequences for killing people? Were the consequences worse for killing many, many people? Were the consequences different because he'd done it deliberately? Did it matter that he'd done it to protect the people he loved? Worse, if they'd tranquilized him because his panic had gotten out of control, what would they do to him if they found out he was a murderer?

            "Bolin?"

            "I have to get out of here."

            He wished he hadn't said it. He heard the panic in his voice very clearly, the meaningful quivering that came to his throat with every noise he made. Su must have heard the mania, too, because she stood up as if preparing to grab him.

            "I'm sorry I ever came in here," Bolin said sharply. "I'm sorry I bothered you trying to tell you what I wanted." He marched toward the door. "I won't make that mistake again."

            "Bolin," Su cried desperately, "you can't keep running away from your problems like this!"

            "Watch me."

            He slammed the door behind him when he left.

            Bolin didn't know where to go but he knew he couldn't just stand idly outside of Su's office door. The workers in the courtyard were staring at him and there was no doubt in his mind that Su would follow him as soon as she got over her shock. He couldn't go back to his own room: People would know to find him there and plus there was the puke he'd neglected, and he didn't want to smell that until he got the motivation to clean it up. By that logic he couldn't go to Korra's room, either. She had to have told people that he found some peace in there when there was nowhere else for him to go.

            He went to his quiet place, or the ruins that had once been his quiet place. Su, Opal, and Korra were the only people who knew it existed, and Bolin knew that Opal wouldn't come looking for him unless she knew something horrible had happened. It would take Su a while to cycle through all the places he could be hiding, and the odds of her choosing this place to search first were low considering he'd completely destroyed it. Korra wouldn't bother him because she had no idea there was even a problem.

            Well, she knew there was a problem. She knew that better than anyone else. But she didn't know about his spat with Su, and as long as Korra didn't know, Su would be the only one who might set about looking for him.

            The clearing was just as he'd left it, and he'd left it ugly. Though some sprouts of grass had started growing through the upturned dirt, the tree he'd uprooted remained lying where he'd thrown it and the patches of charred rock he'd lavabent into the ground rose up in ugly clumps of black. The first obsidian shards he'd thrown were still lodged in the bark of the tree at which he'd thrown them.

            His quiet place had been ruined but it was still quiet, and that was good for something.

            Bolin sat against the fallen tree and fidgeted, his eyes locked on the grass at his feet, and he tried hard to force his mind into thinking of solutions to the very many problems he'd caused. It wouldn't cooperate. All he could think about was how he managed to ruin every good thing that presented itself to him, how he managed to squander every opportunity he'd been given because he was too bullheaded to accept the help that he so desperately needed or too blind to understand that problems existed beyond the scope of what he could handle.

            What was worse was that now there was no way to escape the fact that he'd failed. The evidence of his own stupidity seemed to stick out wherever he went regardless of where he turned. He'd ruined Republic City for himself before Su had taken him away: He'd collapsed in Asami's office and rendered Air Temple Island as a whole a place of somber isolation where everyone kept to themselves and nobody laughed. He'd threatened to melt police headquarters. He'd freaked out in his own apartment and that was where the nightmares had started. Even the idea of the city's broken skyline reminded Bolin of the worst, because he'd stood atop one of those broken buildings when his whole world had crumbled and fallen on top of him. No matter what, if he went back to Republic City, he'd have nowhere to go where there weren't constant reminders of how badly he'd screwed up.

            Now Zaofu was the same way. He'd once had this clearing to sit in, and he'd ruined it in a fit of anger that he'd been completely unable to control. He'd had his own room, a lavish, gigantic room that afforded him all the personal space he could ever have asked for, and now the chunk of lava he'd thrown at the healers had melded with the floor. Beyond the physical, the memories of what had happened in that room were strong, too. Opal had backhanded him in that room. He'd punched Su to the ground in that room. He'd laid there for two days when he'd first arrived, spending every waking moment that he wasn't occupied with one of Su's attendants hating his life and wishing he'd never shown up. He'd ruined Su's office three or four times now, between the hitting and the yelling and the arguments that had taken place there. He'd certainly ruined Opal's room when he'd threatened her and straddled her and scared her so seriously that she'd never let him touch her again.

            Just about the only place that remained safe in Zaofu was Korra's room, and Bolin dared not go in there because even she was a reminder of his failure in the weirdest ways possible. Of all the people he knew and loved, Korra seemed to be the only person to whom he'd grown closer since the collapse, and though Bolin wanted to tell himself that he couldn't guess why, deep in the back of his mind, he knew. When he'd screwed up in his delirium and kissed her he'd roused something in her that hadn't been there before, and regardless of whether she had been acting on it consciously, it had made Korra somehow less afraid of him. Maybe her desire to help him was genuine, but it was tainted because if he'd never kissed her then she wouldn't be getting so close to him.

            She'd gotten _too_ close, if Bolin was honest with himself. He'd known that for a while now, but he'd not yet had the strength of will to begin distancing himself from her. He'd told himself that he was going to, he'd made up his mind on that matter before they'd left for Fire Fountain City and he decided that he didn't want to come home. But he hadn't followed through on it. Korra kept putting herself close to him, physically and emotionally, and he'd been too weak and stupid to push her away. He'd been complacent when she acted, and his complacency had allowed her to break through the walls he'd so carefully put up.

            Korra was, in effect, the only thing keeping him in Zaofu. He could walk straight out of city limits uncontested if he waited until the right time and found the right place to cross the border into the mountains. Without the domes, Zaofu was open for him to come and go as he pleased, but he hadn't done it because of Korra, because she would be devastated if he left, and for some stupid reason he didn't want her to be sad that he was gone.

            It was funny how the logic went so backward in Bolin's head and how little he could recognize the insanity in his reasoning.

            Korra was the only reason he was still there. She was the only reason he was still alive. She was the only one who had cared enough to check in on him, and so she was the only one who might realize it if he left, and she was probably the only one who would care enough to be truly upset by the matter. No one else cared like Korra cared, because Bolin had screwed up and made her love him.

            He'd hurt Opal. He'd hurt her badly enough that she'd been keeping her distance. And he'd hurt Asami, too, though in a different way. He'd disappointed her so thoroughly that she'd begun to keep her distance, too. Neither of them had tried to talk to him in days, and they'd made no effort to visit him since arriving home. Su was sending too many mixed signals for Bolin to really understand how she felt. One second she seemed to be absolutely furious with him and the next second it seemed that all she wanted to do was help him. She hadn't come to visit him yesterday. She must have been too caught up with her business as an Earth Nation governor to devote too much time and effort to monitoring his well-being. She kept claiming to care so much, but she'd been delegating his healing to complete strangers since he arrived. If he slipped off in the night it would probably be half a day or more before she realized that he was gone.

            Mako was the wild card, but Bolin really didn't care about what Mako thought. Mako was a traitor and a horrible brother who chose the people who'd kidnapped him over his own family, and that offense was unforgivable. Bolin had risked life and limb to get him away from the crazy firebenders who'd taken him, and Mako hadn't even uttered a _thank you_. Bolin wasn't sure he'd accept the thanks even if Mako offered it. In fact, he knew he wouldn't. Whenever he thought about Mako, Bolin became so angry that he couldn't think straight, so it didn't really matter to him if his disappearing upset Mako. Who cared about upsetting Mako? Mako had no room to talk about upsetting people.

            The solution hit him like a brick to the side of the head. Except for Mako and Korra, he'd managed to alienate everyone without ever meaning to by frightening them. He'd acted out in front of them in ways that were so contrary to their idea of what he should be that they couldn't reconcile it, and their inability to predict what he would do had left their heads spinning. He didn't care about Mako, and that left only Korra standing in his way. Korra was too fluid to be bothered by his outbursts. Korra expected everything, or maybe she expected nothing. Maybe her bar had been set so low that there was no use trying to slip beneath it. Her expectations were so low that Bolin literally couldn't disappoint her. As long as Bolin kept breathing and as long as his eyes kept opening, she'd stay there beside him because she was happy that he was alive.

            There had to be some other way to push her out that didn't involve frightening her. There had to be some other way that didn't involve violence. There had to be some way to use her feelings against her, to turn her caring about him into hating him. He just had to figure out what it was.

            Bolin was surprised when no one came looking for him. He sat in his quiet place for most of the afternoon, until the sun had begun dipping low in the west and his body began growing unbelievably heavy. There would be no use sitting there trying to plot his escape if his body was giving out on him, so Bolin stood with a great effort and began his shuffling way back to his room to sleep.

            Everything was quiet as he walked through the outskirts of the city back to the Beifong estate. The construction crews had left in the middle of their work on the courtyard, and the only people milling about outside were the metal clan guards on their patrols, and none of them gave Bolin a second glance when he walked by. None of them even said hello.

            "Where have you been?"

            Mako's words had come out an angry snap as soon as Bolin pushed his bedroom door open, and Bolin felt his heartbeat quicken at the sound. He stopped in the doorway, an automatic reaction to the unexpected noise, and he stared hard at Mako with an expression that made Mako's own stern face soften up in shock.

            Bolin felt as much surprise as he did indignation at his brother's presence. He didn't know how he hadn't felt Mako standing there. He'd not been wearing any shoes. Maybe it was because Mako had been away for so long and because Bolin had been off his feet for the better part of four days. Now he focused on it, though, Bolin felt him. He felt Mako's heartbeat quicken in nervous anticipation. It wasn't a negative emotion by any means, but there was a tentativeness about Mako that Bolin hadn't expected to be there.

            "Where were you?" Mako asked, gentler now, more concerned than angry. "I've been waiting here all afternoon. Nobody knew--"

            "Get out."

            Mako's mouth flapped but no words came out of it for a comical moment until at last he managed to stammer a, "What?" that sounded more reflex than inquiry. The nervous anticipation turned to a distinct unease.

            "Get out of my room."

            Bolin stepped to the side of the door and gestured Mako on his way, but Mako didn't go anywhere. He made no move to leave at all. Mako kept standing beside the bed with a concerned look on his face that served only to set Bolin farther on edge. There was little Bolin wanted to do less than speak to his brother right now. He'd had a bad enough day as it was.

            "I don't even get a hello?" Mako asked. Bolin couldn't tell if the unusually high pitch in his voice had come from sadness or anger. "I don't even get an I love you? I haven't seen you in _months_ and all I get out of you is _get out?_ "

            "Be glad you got that much. Now leave."

            "What's your problem?"

            "You're my problem."

            Mako looked blindsided, like Bolin had grown a second head or something. "I don't understand," Mako stammered. "Why are you being so..."

            "So _what_ , Mako?" Bolin prompted venomously.

            "Why are you being so hateful?"

            "Leave," Bolin said again, more sternly than he had before. "Get out. I don't want to talk to you right now, and I would appreciate it if you would just get out of my room and leave me alone."

            "I'm not going anywhere!" Mako replied, a heat in his voice that hadn't been there before. It was like the stupor had worn off. "I want to talk to my little brother."

            Bolin tossed the door closed, too tired to fight, and as he strode purposefully to his bed, Mako stepped respectfully aside. Bolin kept his eyes down as he walked, and he laid atop the blankets without saying a word or acknowledging that Mako had moved to accommodate him. He curled on his side with a grimace, turned his back toward his brother, and closed his eyes.

            "What's going on with you?" Mako persisted. "Why won't you talk to me?"

            "I've got nothing to say to you," Bolin said coldly. "Now I asked you to leave."

            "I'm _not_ leaving."

            "Then shut up and let me sleep."

            Mako definitely shut up, but that was the only thing that seemed to change. Bolin couldn't know for sure exactly what Mako was thinking or how Mako was feeling now his feet weren't grounded, but if he knew his brother as well as he thought he did, Mako would probably be fuming. There was little Mako had ever enjoyed less than Bolin's attitude when it came on him.

            "You're going to have to talk to me eventually," Mako said hotly after a few moments in silence.

            Bolin didn't respond. He would be stubborn to the end on this. He owed Mako absolutely no favors here, and if the truth was known, Mako owed _him_ a favor for coming to Fire Fountain City and dragging his useless behind out of his cell. Mako owed Bolin everything, because Bolin had compromised his own integrity to get Mako out alive. Bolin had killed people to get Mako out alive.

            "Bo, come on."

            Bolin just laid there, obstinate, and he thought for a moment about whether there was anything Mako could ever say that would assuage his hate. He'd long since decided that a simple apology wouldn't cut it, and Bolin knew without ever contemplating it that any explanation Mako could offer for his treachery wouldn't do the trick, either. There was no excuse that Mako could contrive that would outweigh his decision to leave Republic City the night he’d met with Lin. There was nothing Mako could do or say that would eclipse the fact that he'd abandoned Bolin and everyone else that had once cared about him.

            "Are you seriously just going to lay there and ignore me?"

            Bolin clenched his jaw but kept his eyes resolutely closed.

            "I get it," Mako said after a long minute with an enormous, sad sigh. He sounded very suddenly close to tears and Bolin knew it because he'd heard that voice before. It wasn't one that came over Mako often, but when it did, it was genuine, and it tugged persistently at Bolin's heart. "I get that you want your space. I just wanted to come in here and say that... I missed you, I guess. I guess I just wanted to say that I'm glad I'm home and I'm glad you're here, too. I'll leave you alone, but I'm going to come back tomorrow. Think about talking to me then, okay? Till then, I'm sorry you were sick, and I hope you feel better. I love you."

            One more enormous sigh, and Bolin listened to Mako's footsteps heading toward the door. It didn't occur to Bolin until after Mako left that the puke he'd left on the floor earlier that day was gone and that Mako just said that he regretted Bolin had been sick. Bolin put it together pretty quick that Mako had cleaned up after him the same way Mako had cleaned up after him when they were kids. The memory tugged at Bolin in the same way as the quivering in Mako's voice had done, and it took every ounce of Bolin's resolve to keep himself from breaking down again.

            He had to get out of Zaofu to protect the people he cared about from himself. He had to leave to save the girls their fear, to save Su the disappointment of having a murderous failure for what should have been a son-in-law, and he had to leave to keep Mako from understanding the truth. He had to leave and he had to do it fast, before all his resolve left him and he caved in to more pandering and coddling and ineffective attempts at healing that hadn't worked and would continue not working until he died.

            He had to get out, and he had to do it now.


	40. Convictions

            Mako left Bolin's room with a purpose that he meant to fulfill even if the hour had grown almost painfully late. An idea had sprung into the forefront of his mind, and while it wasn't a breakthrough by any means, it was important enough that he felt he couldn't wait.

            Since landing in Zaofu he'd spoken to Su, Asami, and Opal about all things concerning Bolin, but he'd not yet discussed anything with Korra. He wondered how in the world he'd made that oversight considering what he knew. Korra and Bolin were closer than anyone else, so it stood to reason that Korra would be the person who could provide the most information.

            It wasn't that Mako didn't appreciate his talk with Su, but in retrospect, there had been too much that she didn't know. When he was talking to her, Mako suspected that the holes in her story had been deliberate, but now he knew better.

            On the same level, Mako was also disappointed in his conversation with Opal and Asami. They'd had ample information, but the way they had presented it seemed oddly out of tune. There had been some obvious bias. Their depiction of Bolin hadn't set in line with Su's. They had suggested he was violent for the sake of being violent because he couldn't control himself and the aggression hit him at random. Su had suggested that there were things that people said or did to him that set him off. Su had suggested that there was always some kind of trigger, even if they didn't know what it was.

            As he walked, Mako considered how his experience with Bolin just now had been different still. There had been hostility, but there'd been nothing physical. Bolin hadn't postured at him. Everything that was in any way combative had come across in his speaking, in the words he chose and the tone he used to convey the messages. Everything Bolin had done in a physical capacity had been fairly passive. He'd seemed unable to maintain eye contact, which was weird enough and might have suggested a lack of confidence, and beyond that he'd put himself into positions of submission.

            Mako hated to draw the comparison, but Bolin seemed more like a dog that had been hit one too many times than anything else. It didn't strike Mako that Bolin was looking for any kind of fight, but there was no denying that he'd grown outrageously defensive. The stress of that alone could easily make him lash out. If Bolin was always waiting for the next shoe to drop and never knew when it would happen, it was only understandable that he would be on edge, and if that shoe dropped right when Bolin thought he was getting comfortable and back to normal again, the results would be many times worse.

            Without having spoken to everyone, Mako decided on his theory: Bo wasn't really violent regardless of what everyone thought of him or what they had seen him do on Baihe Island. Bo was on the defensive. The outbursts were his way of working to protect himself. Or maybe they were his way of working to protect everyone else, to shelter them from seeing him so out of step. Either way he wasn't being violent for the sake of violence, he was being violent because he somehow had convinced himself that it was in everyone's best interest.

            It had to be that way. Mako just needed proof.

            He knocked gently on Korra's door and leaned against the wall patiently when he heard her rustling around inside. She took her time answering the door, and even when she did it was only an inch or two. She opened it only enough to peek outside.

            "Hey," Mako said, "can I come in?"

            Korra looked a shade beyond startled and she glanced briefly back into the room, but she opened the door all the same and motioned him inside. Then she crossed the room and sat on her very messed up bed and pulled her blankets up over her lap.

            Mako noted with interest how flushed her face was, but he couldn't mark its cause. She seemed a little breathless. It was weird considering the hour.

            "I hope I didn't catch you at a bad time," Mako said, uncertain but polite. "I know it's late, but--"

            "No!" Korra cried, but everything about the way she'd said it contradicted her. She seemed to notice this as well, because she looked a little mortified, then she cleared her throat to try and recover, and she said as casually as possible, "What's going on?"

            "I just got done talking to Bolin," Mako said, and again Korra's reaction wasn't at all what he might've expected. Her face went redder than it already was, and she shifted very uncomfortably on her bed and looked down. Again, Mako didn't want to read too much into her body language, so he continued a bit forcefully. "I wanted to ask you a few questions."

            "I suppose," Korra said quietly. She didn't look up from her hands. She was fidgeting nervously with the blanket. "What do you need?"

            "On our way home, you told me that Opal and Bo had a _falling out_. What was it? What happened?"

            Again with the uncomfortable shift, and this time Korra's face screwed up, too. Then she relaxed, then she sighed. "He and Opal got into a fight," she explained slowly, "and Opal didn't let Bolin defend himself. She didn't believe what he was saying and he must have said the wrong thing, because she hit him."

            "She _hit_ him?"

            "Yeah. She backhanded him. The bruise is mostly gone now but you can still see a little bit of it. Right here," she pointed to her own cheek, and Mako did remember seeing the slightest shade of brown there. "It's been almost two weeks, though. Whatever. She hit him, that's what happened. He didn't take it well, got mad and upset and threatened to kill himself and I convinced him not to. But then we told him about you, and Opal tried to apologize to him about keeping secrets."

            "And then he grabbed her and threw her," Mako finished for her. He'd heard the rest of this story from Opal, though he found it more than a little interesting that she'd left out the detail that she'd backhanded Bolin before he'd gotten rough with her.

            "Yeah. I guess Asami told you?"

            Mako nodded. "What were they fighting about? When it all happened?"

            Korra swallowed very hard, and though her eyes stayed on her hands, Mako saw her glance up at him out of the corner of her eye. "Me," she said at last. "They were fighting about me. That sounds really self-absorbed, but it's true. I had been training with Bo in the mornings when he was on Air Temple Island to help him get back in the swing of things. She thought there was more to it than that. She thought we were seeing each other. You know. In _that_ way."

            Mako's brow rose of its own volition. So, Opal had jumped to conclusions, but the conclusions she’d jumped to seemed completely reasonable. If Korra and Bolin had acted at that time anything close to how they had acted on their way home from Baihe Island, it would've been hard for Opal to _avoid_ that conclusion. Not five minutes had gone by that the two of them hadn't been touching each other, and though the touching hadn't been romantic or lustful, it had certainly been intimate.

            "Okay," Mako said at last, "fine then. Next question: Did it seem to you like he was getting any better? Before he came to Zaofu? Asami told me that he was staying on Air Temple Island for a while after he was let out of the hospital but she didn't really say much beyond that. Was he making any progress?"

            "Well, yeah," Korra said. She did look up now, and it seemed to Mako that whatever nervousness she'd been harboring when he'd entered had gone away completely. "He was making lots of progress that I saw. When I say we trained in the mornings, I mean we trained _every_ morning for like, a week and a half. He was up before dawn and usually beat me to the pavilion. And when it came time to start trying to bend and getting his strength back up he didn't shy away from anything. Looking back on it, I guess I should be impressed. He did most of it while he was starving to death."

            "They told me about that, too," Mako said, and Korra nodded as though relieved that she wouldn't have to explain it. "But he was making progress?"

            "Absolutely."

            "And then you took him to see that combustion guy, and he fell apart."

            "Yeah, that's a nice way of explaining it."

            And there was the first piece of evidence toward proving Mako's theory correct. Bolin had been seeing positive results from his work regardless of whether he was eating or sleeping or caring for himself. He'd been putting one foot in front of the other, even if he was taking baby steps, and there had been forward motion. Then they had made him lavabend, and Mako knew Bolin well enough to understand that if someone asked Bolin to do something, Bolin wouldn't say no. Bolin would do anything he was asked even if he knew he couldn't or shouldn't be doing it, because in a certain way Bolin was a living, breathing, earthbending doormat. The lavabending had overexerted him, and that had made Bolin fall apart. It had taken away all the progress his baby steps had afforded him, had hurt him both physically and mentally, and set him back.

            "That was the first time something that bad happened, right?" Mako asked, genuinely curious. "When he fainted?"

            Korra nodded, and then Mako nodded in return. If Asami and Opal had explained that evening with any matter of honesty, he knew that it would have been an enormous blow to Bolin's self-image. He'd always loved putting on a show, making it seem like everything was okay even when it wasn't. If he'd been struggling to keep that mask on and failed, and if he'd displayed half as much vulnerability and instability as Asami and Opal had explained, his confidence would have been completely obliterated.

            It was a heck of a start for knocking Bolin into such a state of desperation.

            "Okay, so all that junk happened," Mako reasoned. "Fine. Then he was staying on Air Temple Island again while he was waiting to come back here. Did he make any progress there?"

            "I don't know," Korra said. "He didn't talk to anyone for a few days, then he and Opal hooked up and he seemed okay till he left. I didn't see him again until after we got back from the Boiling Rock."

            "Well that doesn't help, I guess," Mako mused. He would have to ask Su about the gap. "But then you guys came here and knocked him down again."

            "I'd say we definitely knocked him down," Korra said, a guilty edge to her voice now. "We kicked his feet right out from underneath him."

            "And he blew up again," Mako reasoned. "Okay. Are you seeing a pattern here? Because I am. Was there any upward progress between when you told him about me and when you came to rescue me?"

            Korra shook her head. "Not really. Nothing substantial. He threatened Opal and I found him in the shower afterward. He was an absolute wreck, but he managed to tell me that he did it because he wanted her to stay safe, and since she wouldn't listen to him explain himself at any other point he figured he needed to scare her into believing him. That's why he did it. Then he opened up a little bit and tried explaining himself more generally. You know, about how he gets mad and things. He told me that the only thing he can really process is being angry or panicked, and everything else is just white noise."

            "And then you came to get me."

            "Yeah. The whole Opal thing happened the day before we were set to leave, and you really know the story after that. He neglected himself for the few days it took us to get to you, and then when we were on the island..." Korra faltered and looked back at her hands. She started fidgeting again. "Well, you know."

            "Asami told me," Mako said. He tried to force himself to sound reassuring, but wasn't sure if it actually helped. "She told me that he killed a bunch of people, but my understanding is that it was in self-defense. And if it wasn't in self-defense then it was in defense of you guys. Either way, he did what he needed to get all of us out of there."

            Korra smiled. "I'm glad you see it that way, too. I guess Asami yelled at him before we left and said she didn't want him to go with because she was scared of him. I get that she was afraid, I really do, but if he hadn't come along I don't think any of us would be sitting here having these conversations. He saved our skins." She paused and sighed, the smile fading. "I just wish he saw it that way, too."

            Mako shrugged and sighed, and he leaned against the wall beside the door, his arms crossed. He hated the disconnect between the girls and their stories. He hated that nobody seemed to be on the same page, and he hated that they had failed so miserably at staying objective. But Korra had been relatively level-headed. She hadn't shied away from the facts the same way that Asami and Opal had, because if she did, she'd never have said that she was the reason Opal and Bolin fought.

            "Look," Mako said quietly, "I want to tell you what I think. I told Asami and Opal that they needed to go have a sit-down with Su, and I think you and I should be there for it, too. All of us, everyone who has dealt with my brother or _will_ deal with my brother, we need to sit down and hash all of this out and understand who played what part in what breakdown and all that junk. We need to know who is responsible for what, and everyone needs all the information. I think Bo should be there, too."

            "I agree," Korra said. She matched Mako's quiet tone, and if he listened very carefully she sounded a little guilty. "We all need to fess up to the stupid things we've done. We all need to apologize."

            Mako wasn't going to press that point. "Hopefully we'll be able to find some common ground," he continued. "Hopefully we'll be able to figure out what triggers him to getting angry. In the meantime, we need to stop excluding him in these talks. He needs to know that we support him because I get the feeling he's been getting mixed messages."

            "What do you mean?"

            "I mean that on one side you have Opal and Asami making him out to be the worst guy who's ever lived, and on the other side you've got you and Su, and between the two of you there's so much coddling and dismissing of his faults that he's not being held accountable. Half of you guys aren't cutting him any slack at all and half of you are cutting him too much."

            Korra looked at Mako inquisitively, as though she wanted further explanation, but she didn't say so. And now that Mako had begun his little rant, he felt himself getting a little bit upset. He didn't want to keep going until he had the chance to cool off and get his head back. He needed to make sure that everything here was done the right way, because Bolin wouldn't see any benefit if they screwed it up.

            "I'm going to go to bed," Mako said. "I'll talk to Su in the morning. Maybe we can all talk over breakfast, get this knocked out early and start putting it right. I don't have much time anyway."

            "What?"

            Mako opened the door and glanced back at Korra. "I've got to go back to Republic City soon. I've got to brief Beifong and Raiko and a bunch of other big wigs about where I was and what I found out. I don't know when it's going to happen, but it's not going to be long before I've got to leave. Couple days, maybe."

            "Hey," Korra said when Mako started to leave again, and he paused in the doorway but didn't look back at her. "I'm glad you're home," she finished.

            "I'm glad, too."

            Mako took the long way back to his room, but not even the cool night air could calm his mind. He laid down with thoughts racing through his head, problems without solutions and shots in the dark. Beneath it all lingered a dull frustration that bubbled up whenever he reconsidered the conflicting stories between the girls. Team Avatar had never been so dysfunctional before. Sure, they'd all had their disagreements and little spats, but nothing had ever driven a wedge in between them like this had.

            It was strange, Mako decided. The situation, as he understood it so far, had played out almost completely contrary to what he might have imagined. He'd always imagined that if one of them was ever truly hurt, they'd all band together to help the injured recover. They'd all offered their support to Korra when she was injured, and no matter how that turned out, Mako wanted to believe that all his awkward, unanswered letters had made something of a difference in motivating Korra to recover. He knew that Asami's had.

            So why wasn't it the same for Bolin? Sure, everyone had done some part to try to help him, but in the end, all their efforts seemed to backfire and the only common element to all the stories he'd heard was Bolin himself. Mako wasn't sure how all of them had missed Bolin's newfound penchant for self-sabotage. If they had, they'd have been able to put a stop to it and maybe they could've prevented Bolin from falling into whatever vortex of self-destruction he'd fallen into.

            With an enormous sigh, Mako closed his eyes and slammed his head against the pillow, but no matter what he did, he couldn't seem to fall asleep. His first night back at home--or as close to home as he was going to be for the time being--was spent rolling around and trying to stop himself from overanalyzing the situation. He knew it was futile to try and fit the pieces together right now. He didn't _have_ all the pieces. All the same, he was desperate to help.

            Mako knew he slept a little bit because he woke in the morning from a dream of which he could only remember tiny snippets. It was a weird dream that bordered somewhere between uncanny and nightmarish and had featured Toru and Guan and Bolin and Korra and everyone else he’d come to know and care about. Yaozhu's corpse had been there. Jing and Fa had been there, but they'd been somehow undead, their faces scarred from the lightning Mako had thrown at them, their bodies all reddened and destroyed.

            Even when he opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling, Mako couldn't recall the narrative. He wasn't sure that he wanted to.

            He took a long time making himself ready for the day. He laid in bed for half an hour before he finally forced himself to make his way to the shower, and he spent so long under the water that it had gone cold before he ever began washing. The whole time he remained pleasantly thoughtless, caught in the joyous feeling of being safe for the first time in months. Sure, he'd been relatively safe once he'd been promoted to Captain, but there had always been the threat of betrayal looming over him and in the end that threat had been realized in the most disgusting fashion possible. That threat wasn't here. Here was a relief. Here, the worst problem he had to deal with was his brother acting out, and Mako knew well enough that he could put Bolin down quickly if Bolin tried to lay a hand on someone in anger as he'd done before.

            Mako had been training. Bolin hadn't.

            An odd feeling of self-satisfaction came over Mako as he made his way to the dining hall. He entertained for the first time that he might be stronger than his brother, and that had never been the case before. Even in the awkward time when Mako hit puberty and Bolin didn't, Bolin had been stronger because he'd been stupid and reckless. Mako had always had too much restraint, and he always gave up his portions of the food, besides.

            Their relationship had been weird like that, and Mako recalled it fondly. Bolin had always had the one-up physically, but somehow Mako had managed to win every fight they'd ever had, and it was usually because Bolin lost interest and gave up. Maybe it was because Bolin knew that if a problem was bad enough for Mako to resort to hitting him, he'd genuinely screwed up. Either way, Mako knew he'd had no right to win any of them based purely on strength.

            Now it was different, and that made Mako proud. It also made him feel slightly guilty, but that was neither here nor there.

            Su greeted Mako very warmly when he entered the room, and much to his surprise none of the girls were seated at the table with her. It wasn't until he looked at the clock hanging above the door that he realized just how early it still was. Then it struck him that he'd been waking before dawn almost every day since he'd been taken. It wasn't a wonder that his body would maintain the schedule for him naturally.

            As Mako ate he explained his plans to meet with everyone to Su, and she seemed happy to accommodate them all. The only problem was that a breakfast meeting was all but out of the question now, because Su and Mako were already eating and there was no telling what time the girls would wake. More, according to Su, Bolin wouldn't be available until early afternoon at best. His morning would be spent between healers tending to his ribs and his arm, and she had arranged at noon for some kind of analyst to speak with him about whatever had gone wrong in his head. Su had sounded hopeful when she'd said this, but she'd been remarkably realistic on the matter, too. It took no effort to hope that talking to someone would help Bolin cope with whatever mess had tangled up his mind, but she imagined that in reality, Bolin would just get angry and clam up.

            Su and Mako thus agreed to a dinner meeting, and Su offered to make all the arrangements. She even agreed to bring Bolin in, even if he didn't want to be brought. For his part, Mako volunteered to lead the discussion, and though Su poked fun at him over his need to _feel like a detective_ , she seemed a little relieved that for once she wouldn't be in charge.

            Mako decided when he left the dining hall that going to visit Bolin as he'd promised wouldn't be productive, particularly not if there were other people around, and so he passed the rest of his morning the same way he'd passed his mornings since arriving on Baihe Island. The only differences now were that he didn't have a quad of men to lead, a host of commanders breathing down his neck, and he could be a little bit leisurely about how he went about his training routine.

            He ran for a while, for longer than he usually would have, to the border of the city and around the exterior where the dome would once have been, and Mako found himself surprised by just how much of the outskirts of Zaofu remained relatively overgrown. There were a few patches of naturally occurring trees and clearings besides, one of which had clearly been used for training before he'd gotten there, and there were number of highly manicured parks besides.

            When he returned to the Beifong compound he made his way naturally toward the metalbending arena. It wasn't until he saw the place that he remembered what Asami had said about Bolin doing some damage to it, and the sheer amount of damage took his breath away. The whole courtyard had been upturned and tilled, and what looked like twenty-five or thirty earthbenders were working on leveling the ground in different areas. Either Bolin had had a field day with the lavabending or Su had decided on a complete makeover while she was repairing the damages.

            Mako had a good feeling it was the former.

            After what training he could muster, Mako had another shower and retired back to his room for a midday nap, which passed too quickly and without the drama of dreams, and when he woke he decided to set to work on other, more administrative tasks. There was the matter of figuring out exactly how the conversation he'd planned over dinner would go, and beyond that there was the trouble of preparing a statement for the Chief and her delegation of politicians.

            Without much in the way of supplies, Mako made his way to Su's office, and though she was initially very curious as to why he'd come to call, she agreed to provide him with everything he needed to prepare his paperwork, and he settled in quietly on one of the couches and set to scribbling his notes.

            All told, it was a restful day, and though he spent some of it working, Mako was content. To this point, every time he'd said that it was good to be home was mostly paying lip service and saying what he knew the others wanted to hear, but as he sat in the quiet, scribbling a detailed account of his experiences and relationships with the Society, he was truly happy to be here.

            Su startled Mako when she stood up suddenly and declared that it was time for dinner, and she smiled nervously at Mako when he looked at her in shock. Still, he followed her all the way back to the dining hall where Korra, Asami, and Opal sat, apparently waiting, and apparently just as nervous as Su.

            Bolin was notably absent.

            Mako took his customary seat across the table from Korra and Asami, and as he noted everyone's unease he figured Bolin's absence might be a positive. At the very least he could get all the ladies straight and make sure that they knew his purpose in calling this meeting, that way if Bolin did show up, they could work as a unit.

            "Let's get started," Mako said at once. He tried to put on a professional tone, a commanding tone that he might've used at the precinct. "There's some stuff we need to get on the table before Bo gets here."

            No one said anything. They all had trained expressions of skepticism and worry on him, and it struck Mako that they might be more than nervous. All of them had been keeping secrets from one another, no one was innocent in that regard, and now it was time to come clean. Last time they'd come clean about something, Bolin had tossed Opal and liquefied the courtyard. He supposed some nervousness was to be expected.

            "I'll do the talking, then," Mako continued with a conspicuous clear of his throat. "Feel free to jump in here if you want." He paused and the girls and Su nodded at him.

            At this point a handful of kitchen staff began placing plates on the table in front of them, and while the girls tentatively started on their meals, Mako kept his focus.

            "I'm going at this head on, so I'm sorry if I'm direct. We don't have enough time to mess around, and besides, all this beating around the bush has only caused more problems. It's time everyone knows everything that's been going on, good and bad, so we can work together to help get Bolin back on track. I think we can all agree on that."

            They nodded again, and Mako snuck in a bite of his dinner.

            "So here it is," Mako said, and he looked directly at Su to begin. "I told Opal and Asami last night that Bolin hit you. They know. You want to explain more about it, or should I?"

            Su's eyes went wide, but she didn't shy away from Mako's request. Instead, she put her utensils down on her plate and locked her gaze on Opal, and she very coolly recollected for them how Bolin had blown up at her, how he'd knocked her to the floor and how she'd brought him down right along with her. To Mako's relief, she included significantly more detail to the girls than she'd included with him: Bolin had been testy to begin with, and she'd mouthed off, and after the whole thing was over she kicked him while he was down by insulting his manhood very straightforwardly. And when Opal enraged halfway through the story, Su quieted her by saying placatingly, "Don't worry about it, sweetie, I've got him handled."

             In all, Su's talk was a good start to the discussion. She must have understood Mako better than he thought she would, as she'd done everything he could have wanted and more. She'd included every detail down to the last in a succinct way, and she'd presented her story with as much objectivity as he could expect.

            "Okay," Mako said after it seemed Su was finished talking. "Asami, your turn. What have you got?"

            Asami didn't have much, if the truth was told, but it seemed from the sudden change in her demeanor that what little she'd done had made her feel supremely guilty. She explained to the table how she'd tried to remain as neutral as she could in the beginning, how she'd tried to get Bolin to eat, sometimes forcefully, how she'd tried to read with him and generally take care of the needs she figured might be otherwise forgotten. It seemed to Mako that she'd done right by Bolin, at least in the beginning, but then she made mention of his threatening Opal and how that event had caused her to change her opinion.

            "Excuse me?" Su interjected hotly. "He what now?"

            Mako shot Su a look of kind warning, a reminder that she needed to watch her tone. If any hostility came up during this chat, it might fall apart. After all, the threat of hostility was what had caused the secret-keeping in the first place.

            In a very quiet voice, Opal explained what had happened the night Bolin had threatened her, and in the same way that Su had, she included every detail she could remember, even those that didn't paint her in a positive light. She explained that he'd pinned her, but that he'd only done it after a genuine attempt to talk. When she mentioned her airbending at him to knock him away, Mako watched a look of realization come to Su's face that said she'd connected the dots. It hadn't been Baihe Island that had broken his ribs, it had been Opal.

            By the time Opal had finished her explanation her voice had taken on a distinct quiver, and the last thing she said before she stopped talking was, "Before we went into Fire Fountain City I told him that I was sorry and asked him to forgive me. And I told him that I forgave him, too, and that I want to figure things out between us again. I don't think he wants to."

            Silence fell only for a few seconds, and just as Mako opened his mouth to invite more discussion, Korra jumped in. She began where Opal's story left off and told how she'd found        Bolin panic-stricken in an ice-cold shower, how she'd cleaned him up and how he'd begged to stay in her room. For the first time Mako had heard, she explained that Bolin had asked her on many occasions to "take him out" if he got out of line with her, and she reasoned that he must have thought she'd use the Avatar State to keep him on the level. Korra followed that immediately by saying she'd never be able to do that, even if she wanted to.

            Korra's story went on for longer than Su's or Opal's, but it seemed that she had more to say than anyone else. It took her a while to recount Bolin's many admissions of feeling guilty, how he'd tried to explain the machinations of his addled mind and how he couldn't navigate the emotions his body was throwing at him, how he gave in to anger and fear whenever they showed up because it was too hard to fight against them. She discussed his threats of self-harm, his regret for everything he'd done before leaving on Mako's rescue mission, and the difficulty he'd had coming to terms with what he'd done on Baihe Island, but she didn't mention the killing specifically. Korra stayed vague on the matter, and Mako couldn't blame her. No one wanted to be the one to poke that spider-wasp nest.

            In the end, Mako decided that he would do it because someone had to tell Su the truth, but he didn't have the chance. Without warning or fanfare, the dining room door opened and Bolin entered round-shouldered, hands in his pockets and with an escort at his side.

            Bolin's escort stopped at the door, and when Su regarded him he bowed shortly and excused himself without another word. Then Bolin stood alone, extremely self-conscious, and he looked up to find every eye in the room trained on him.

            "Please tell me this isn't some kind of intervention," he said, quite deadpan. He sounded very, very tired and perhaps a little bit irritated. He sounded on the defensive, just as Mako thought he would.

            Su's face brightened at once, though Mako couldn't tell if her smile was fake or not. She stood and gestured Bolin into the room, and as he walked forward she said, "Come sit down. I'll have someone bring you someth--"

            "They fed me an hour ago." Bolin fell heavily into the chair at Mako's right, and he dropped his forehead onto his hand. Su sat down, discouraged, and Bolin heaved a sigh that seemed to drain his whole body. "They told me you wanted to talk to me."

            "How was the healing this morning?" Su asked over another bite of her own dinner. "I didn't hear anything."

            "It hurt."

            Mako noted Bolin's apparently newfound skill at creating very awkward silences. It seemed that every time he said something it caught the others off guard, and Mako didn't know if the resulting silence was because the others were scared of making Bolin explode or if it was caused by something else.

            "Did you keep your dinner down?"

            "No."

            Clearly, Su had hoped for a different answer. "Well, all we can do is keep trying."

            Bolin raised his head and glared dubiously at Suyin. Then, eyebrow up, he shifted his gaze between the others, and then came to rest again back where he'd started. "You didn't bring me in here just to make small talk," he said shrewdly, a little hotly. "So, get to the point so I can go back to my room."

            Su looked pleadingly at Mako, and Mako cleared his throat and turned in his chair to face Bolin more completely.

            "We need to talk about what happened," Mako said directly, and at once, Bolin's body seemed to wind up with an indignant tension. It seemed like an automatic response, and Mako didn't miss the girls' reactions to it. The angrier Bolin looked the more sheepish they became, the more they seemed to shrink back into their chairs. It was enough to make Mako understand: This was normal. This was the routine. Someone said something Bolin didn't like and it made him react. His reaction made the girls react. Then it would escalate until the violence kicked in.

            Mako appreciated the understanding, but he wasn't about to stop. Bolin didn't scare him.

            "We all know what happened on Baihe Island," Mako continued casually, and he took a second to take another bite of his dinner as though the action might diffuse some of the tension. "We all saw it and we need to talk about it."

            Mako didn't want to let Bolin know he was watching, so he kept eating. All the same, he kept a close eye on Bolin's body language and noted with mounting interest how stressed Bolin suddenly looked. His hands, once palm down on the table, had balled into fists so tight his knuckles were beginning to whiten. His face had gone a little pale, too, and his brow had angled and his jaw had clenched. On the whole, it looked like Bolin was already fit to burst.

            "I don't know," Su prompted gently. "What happened on Baihe Island?"

            The anger went out of Bolin at once, and his eyes grew very wide indeed. What little color remained in his face drained away and his attention snapped to Su. It looked to Mako as though Bolin had started shaking.

            For her part, Su played it off well enough. She didn't judge Bolin's reaction. If anything, his reaction forced her to seem more empathetic, because her face softened. "Honey, what happened?"

            For all the effort Mako was putting into acting natural, he found it very hard to keep it up after Su said that. Bolin changed again, and Mako was fascinated by how exactly it reflected the reactions that the girls had explained. Bolin had come in angry and whether he'd done it on purpose, it had seemed to Mako that he was trying to intimidate everyone into leaving him alone. But now Bolin had been presented with the troubling prospect of truth, and the front of anger he'd been building up shattered completely beneath the panic.

            Mako felt more and more guilty about his interest in Bolin's reaction the longer he watched it go on. Bolin had taken to looking about the room, focusing his eyes on one face after another, and all the girls had leveled the same knowing look on him, as though they expected him to come clean about what he'd done right here and now, but all Bolin could do was shake his head pitifully, and he opened his mouth a few times fruitlessly before he was able to utter a very shaky, very frightened, "No!"

            When Bolin tried to stand, Mako caught him deftly by the shoulder and pulled him back down. "You're not running away from this," Mako said sternly. "You can't. Now we've all been in here discussing what's been going on so we--"

            Bolin wrenched his arm out of Mako's hand so suddenly and so powerfully that Bolin nearly fell off his chair. Instead, he grimaced and dropped his face down while he grabbed at his ribs. "I don't want to talk to you people!"

            "Stop yelling," Mako ordered.

            "What happened?" Su asked, her concern genuine now. "On Baihe Island, what happened?"

            "No!" Bolin cried. "No!"

            All pretense was gone, and Mako knew it. If Bolin had been trying to hide his panic before, there was no covering it now. He sounded like someone whose very existence was being threatened; it was a quality Mako had heard only once in Bolin's voice, and that was just after they had lifted off from Fire Fountain City, when Bolin had insisted quite deliriously that all of them were figments of his imagination and that none of them should have been there at all.

            It struck Mako very suddenly that whatever had gone wrong in Bolin's head might be more serious than he thought.

            "Bo," Mako said quietly, hoping that no one else would hear, "calm down. Nobody's going to--"

            "Stop!"

            The shriek set Mako back, froze the blood in his veins and shocked him so seriously that for a second he couldn't think to speak. "Bolin? Bro?"

            Bolin didn't say anything. He sat there shivering with his hands clapped around the back of his head the same way he'd done in Oogi's basket, and though he'd done a passable job of hiding his face from the girls, Mako could see his anguish clearly. His face had twisted and scrunched up, and if Mako looked hard enough he could see the glint of moisture in the corners of his eyes.

            It was incredible how quickly it had happened, how Bolin had gone from angry to panic to whatever weird thing this was, and even though Mako had expected it in part, there was no way he could've prepared himself for the truth of it. He understood now why the girls had gotten so defensive, why they had conditioned themselves to avoid this scenario at all costs. It was horrifying. It was gut wrenching. This was his little brother, and it seemed his whole life had turned into a nightmare where something as simple as a dinnertime conversation could turn into a life-threatening altercation, and that change could happen in fractions of a second. And yes, the conversation was about to turn very dark, but Bolin was surrounded by people who loved him unconditionally and who would happily help him through any trouble the universe could throw at him. Mako just wasn't sure why Bolin couldn't see that. He was stuck on something, and Mako didn't know what it was.

            "Bo," Mako said gently, his voice still low. He bent down and put his hand on Bolin's back. It was the same thing he'd done when they were kids and Bolin was scared, the same tone of voice and the same gesture and the same kindness, and Mako fell back to saying the same thing he'd said back then, too. "You don't have to be afraid. Everything's going to be okay."

            It seemed the shocks wouldn't stop coming, because the laugh that Bolin let go in response made Mako's stomach churn. There was no word to describe how scary and cold that laugh was, or how joyless. Mako understood now why Asami had come straight out and said that Bolin was insane. No sane person could produce a noise like that.

            "Bo?"

            The laugh came again, and Bolin shook his head maniacally. "No," he said in a dangerous, thick voice. "It's not okay, I don't know how you people can keep saying it's okay. What do you even know? You don't know anything!"

            "What are you talking about?"

            "It's _not_ okay!" Bolin roared the words so loud that Mako jumped, and when he looked around for some assistance from the others, they looked just as afraid as Mako felt. Su looked particularly affected. Her face had blanched and her eyes had taken an intense focus.

            Mako turned back to Bolin, uncertain of what to do to stop the panic. No one had told him about this. No one had told him how to fix it.

            "Talk to me," Mako whispered. "What's going on?"

            "It's not okay!" Bolin cried, and indeed the tears had started coming down now. Certainly, Mako was used to seeing his brother cry, but not like this, not so steady-voiced and certain. It was weird how Bolin could cry at the same time he kept the rest of him from reacting. Anyone not in the very spot Mako was in would only see Bolin's shivering, would only hear the crazed tone in his voice. "It's not okay!"

            "Why?" Mako asked. "You keep saying it's not okay, but why? Why can't we help you?"

            In the subsequent silence, Mako heard Su whisper again, "What happened on Baihe Island?" She sounded very afraid now.

            "Bo, you have to talk to me. I can't help if you don't talk to me."

            "You _can't_ help me! Nobody can help me!" Bolin sobbed openly now, but immediately after it came out he tensed again. He was trying to push it back in, Mako knew. "I _killed_ them, Mako! I killed all of them, and all of you are trying to pretend it didn't happen! All of you are trying to convince me that it's not a big deal!"

            Again, Mako looked to the others for help, but they offered nothing. Su looked like she was about to be sick, and Mako heard her say very quietly, "He... Killed... Them?"

            Mako wanted to shush Bolin. He wanted to find some magic words that might calm him, but at the same time Mako was convinced that the only thing to do now was let whatever this outburst was run its course. He put his hand on Bolin's back again.

            "You had to," Mako said. It took effort to keep his own voice even. "If you hadn't done what you did, we'd all be dead."

            "That's a lie!" Bolin cried. "I didn't have to do _anything!_ All I had to do was get you out! All I had to do was--" Bolin faltered in the middle of his sentence as if he'd choked on the words, and he sat for a quiet, tense moment full of quivering. "I should have died," he said, and though Bolin's voice had gone deadly quiet, the words struck Mako harder than any yelling Bolin had ever done. Asami and Su had both mentioned this, but somewhere in the back of his head Mako hadn't believed it possible. Now there was no denying it. The words had come straight out of Bolin's mouth as plain as day.

            Mako didn't know what to say.

            "I shouldn't be here at all! I should've stuck to the stupid plan but my stupid brain won't let me! My stupid brain makes me scared! It makes me crazy! I can't do anything I want, and I do all the things I don't want!" Bolin seemed incapable of stopping his voice from escalating in volume and intensity, and he pressed the heels of his hands so hard against his forehead that Mako felt the tremors running through Bolin's arms and into his back. "I shouldn't be here! I don't know why I can't follow through!"

            "Stop," Mako said. The word had come out as something of an imperative. In his desperation to halt the madness, Mako wondered if all it would take was some firm control. "Stop freaking out. Stop it. There's no reason to be panicking. You're safe. Everything is fine."

            Mako knew it didn't work when that icy laugh came out of Bolin again, but this time Bolin didn't argue. He sat in the quiet for a long enough stretch that Mako began growing anxious himself, and for a third time he glanced around the room as though wordlessly asking for help. The girls made no move at all. They were too afraid.

            Bolin did. All at once he pushed out and stood in a motion so explosive it toppled his chair and nearly took Mako with it, and when Mako righted himself a heartbeat later he looked up into a glare so focused that he was surprised it didn't kill him on the spot.

            "How does that work, Mako? You want to tell me how that works? You and the healers and Korra and everyone who keep telling me that _it's going to be okay_ , tell me how that works at all! I want to know! Because as far as I know, crazy murderers get locked up and sentenced to death! Crazy homicidal earthbenders get _murdered_ , Mako! They don't walk around all free and happy in a big comfortable city, getting special meals and a fluffy bed and a million jerk healers they don't even want!"

            Mako's throat had closed tight so that he couldn't force out a sound. In the face of Bolin's sudden rage there was nothing he could do but watch, wide-eyed, and pretend that he wasn't afraid. He heard Opal squeak behind him.

            Bolin didn't seem affected by the fact that everyone in the room had taken to gaping at him, horrified. He'd started groping at his ribs again, though for better or worse he'd fixated his yelling solely on Mako. Whatever anger he was taking out had a focus, and it seemed to Mako that Bolin may actually have been oblivious to the fact that anyone else was in the room at all.

            "I get that you haven't been around," Bolin went on, just as angry and uncontrolled as he'd been before, "so let's get one thing real straight right now. All I've wanted for the last two months is to _die!_ I've been so miserable that I can't even think straight, and no matter what I do to myself someone always steps in to stop it! And every time something stops me, something _worse_ happens and it makes me want to die all over again! And I'm too stupid and incompetent to do it myself! And now I'm back here with a _kill count_ and you're telling me that everything is going to be fine? _How?_ How is it going to be fine, Mako? Tell me!"

            Mako stammered. He didn't know what to say. He hadn't expected all of this to be directed at him. He hadn't expected to be a target.

            Bolin laughed again. "See? You don't even know. Big brother with all the answers has no clue what to do. So maybe you should take your _everything is going to be fine_ and _shove it_ and leave me alone!" He paused, breathless and grasping his side, and then he looked with tearful eyes to everyone else at the table and roared at them. "That goes for the rest of you, too. Leave me alone!"

            In the stunned silence, Bolin turned for the door. He'd gotten halfway across the room before Mako realized that he'd caved in to Bolin's anger the same way as the girls had, and he stood and made to follow with urgency.

            Mako had barely gained his feet when he heard a collection of shrieks come from Su and Opal, and a swear come from Korra, and a gasp come from Asami, and he righted himself just in time to see Bolin's follow-through. It took a fraction of a second for the understanding to hit, and without thinking Mako threw himself backward to the ground so hard that he lay dazed and winded, watching in awe as a half dozen shards of sharp black rock lodged in the wall right where his head had been not three seconds ago.

            The door slammed and the world went silent.

            "Oh, no. Oh, not again." It was Korra, and she sounded panicked herself now. Her chair scraped and Mako listened to her footfalls as she sprinted toward the door. She slammed it behind her, too.

            Opal burst into hysterical tears. Su stammered through comforting her.

            Then Asami threw herself down beside him and helped him to sit, but when Mako looked at her, she wasn't looking at him. Her eyes had locked on the rocks Bolin had chucked into the wall. When Mako joined her in the examination, he understood her shock. Everything the rocks had touched had begun to smolder, and as if that wasn’t stunning enough, the shards had lodged deep. And though the last thing Mako needed at that very moment was another realization, he understood how Bolin had killed the commander who'd been chasing after Korra. Those shards weren't meant for stunning or slowing. They were made for killing.

            "Are you okay?" Asami asked after a second. "Did he hit you?"

            Mako shook his head and pulled away from Asami's grip. She gave him his room, and he slowly stood and dusted himself off. Asami stood beside him, and together the two of them looked to Opal, doubled over with her crying, and Su, her arms wrapped around Opal in a gesture of maternal comfort.

            Then Asami turned to him with a severe expression and said, "See? I told you. He's insane."

            In agreement, Mako nodded. Bolin certainly was insane, and now that Mako understood the facts, he wasn't going to let something like this happen again.

  



	41. The Healing Process

            Korra's heart beat in her throat, and with every step she took the dread inside of her grew. Bolin had brought out the lava. He'd chucked it straight at Mako's face and then he'd stormed out of the room without another word.

            That had terrified her more thoroughly than anything he'd done to date, and Korra had seen Bolin blow up too many times to keep count. He'd thrown empty threat after empty threat at her, and even in the times when he'd seemed like he was going to follow through, she'd been able to talk him down. But this hadn't followed the pattern. This time he'd lashed out without any warning at all, he'd lashed out unpredictably and with what could easily have been lethal force, and then he'd left without acknowledging that he'd done it at all. It didn't take a genius to see the truth: Bolin wouldn't have cared if he'd hit the mark.

            Even through the fear, something inside Korra kept driving her to follow him, and she was finally beginning to understand what it was. At some point in the last months, Bolin had become an inextricable part of her life. He'd become a prominent fixture. Since he'd kissed her, his presence had affected everything she did, and whatever feelings he'd stirred up in her that horrible night had been left unaddressed for so long that they took root and choked out her reasoning like a weed. Her very perception of Bolin had been shattered the night of the collapse, and in the aftermath, it had come back together in a strange, distorted, uncomfortable way.

            He wasn't the same. There was no denying it. There had been a fundamental change in Bolin that, at first, had been intriguing. He'd presented sides of himself to her that he'd never presented before, sides that she hadn't known existed in him, and those sides were complex and enigmatic enough that over time they became vaguely alluring. The more she thought on them the more she started _feeling_ things about them. And then he'd touched her and spoken to her in ways that she never imagined anyone would ever touch her or speak to her, and the feelings compounded until they became obtrusive. Those feelings were equal parts terrible and wonderful because _this was Bolin_ , and in her wildest dreams Korra had never imagined that she might find herself thinking about him when alone in her bed. But she had, and in the end, it had been thoroughly enjoyable, at least until Mako knocked on her door and reminded her exactly what she'd been thinking about.

            At the same time Bolin had also grown increasingly revolting. A pattern had become evident in him, and now that Korra saw it she didn't understand how she could've been so blind to it before. In the beginning of everything, when he'd first awakened after the attack, Bolin had wanted to talk. He'd asked questions. He'd told people he needed help to understand what was happening to him, and when he was afraid, he'd expressed that fear openly. In the beginning of everything he'd made obvious efforts toward healing.

            At some point that effort died, and Korra didn't know when it was. She wasn't even certain that there had been a single event that caused it. It was entirely possible that Bolin's metaphorical boat had been taking on water through so many tiny holes for so long that its sinking was inevitable, and now it was under water there was no hope to bring it back.

            All Korra knew was that Bolin had stopped talking. There was no desire left in him to work out through nonaggression and dialog whatever issues were racking his brain. If anything, it was quite the opposite. Bolin hadn't simply stopped talking, he'd grown violently opposed to it.

            Korra realized that he'd lost faith in the people he'd once relied on to help him, and there was no way he'd kept enough faith in himself to try and fix his problems alone. Once upon a time Bolin had struggled to cling to hope. Now it seemed he couldn't cling to anything.

            Korra knew what that meant. If Bolin wouldn't let people help him fix his problems and wasn't willing to fix them himself, then he was ready to give up.

            Instinctively, Korra ran to Bolin's quiet place, the grove where he'd found so much solace when he'd first arrived in Zaofu. It was the only place he would run to. It was the only place that made any sense. He'd either come here or he'd go to his room, and there was no way he'd go back to his room because the odds were far too high that he'd run into a healer or a guard who would stop him from doing whatever crazy thing he'd set his mind to when he'd thrown the obsidian at his brother.

            Korra broke breathless and afraid through the tree line and into Bolin's grove. In a panic, she looked around the space, searching for any sign that Bolin had been here, but there was nothing. Everything from the uprooted tree to the scorched ground remained as it had been the last time she'd been here.

            The maw of dread opened wide and Korra choked on her fear. Her throat tightened and her legs wobbled from the frantic running, but she turned tail and retreated toward the Beifong compound. He must have gone to his room. But why? He wouldn't hurt himself in his room. Someone would find him, and they would find him quickly. It was entirely likely that Mako or Asami or Su would already be in his room, though Korra couldn't guess whether they would scold him or try to comfort him.

            Korra wasn't even sure what _she_ would do.

            As she entered the hallway that led to Bolin's door, she slowed and observed. There wasn't a soul in sight, not a guard or a healer, and the silence that filled the corridor felt heavy. It felt eerie, and the fact that the sun was setting didn't help the matter.

            Outside of Bolin's door, Korra stopped and listened. If there were guards or healers and they had gotten into some kind of scuffle with Bolin, there certainly would be noise. But there was nothing. The heavy quiet seemed to have fallen over the entire building, and though Korra knew the place to be in excellent repair, she half expected the door to squeak when she pushed it open.

            One of the downsides of Bolin's bed being in the corner was that it was the first thing anyone would see when they opened the door, and its emptiness coupled with the oppressive silence made Korra's heart jump back into her throat. Every instinct told her not to enter the room but she fought past it. She readied herself for the worst and threw the door open wide.

            The first thing her mind registered was that Bolin was on the ground and Pabu was beside him quietly whining in a way she'd never heard before, and she felt her blood pressure skyrocket before she ever recognized that he was moving. A scream bubbled inside her but caught in her throat, and for the tiniest moment she thought she might faint on the spot.

            But Bolin was moving. Yes, he was on the ground, but he was half propped on his elbows with his face to the floor like he'd just finished being sick, but Korra couldn't see any evidence of that. In fact, there was no evidence of anything wrong except for the fact that Bolin was on the floor, breathing unusually heavily, with Pabu screeching at him. Still, Korra froze in place for a few heartbeats too long while her brain worked to understand that he was alive.

            Her mind came back with a jolt of adrenaline, and before she could stop herself, Korra was on the ground at Bolin's side.

            His face was a particularly ghastly shade of gray, and even when Korra put her hand on his shoulder he didn't look up. Eyes closed, he dropped his forehead to the ground and drew several very long, very shaky breaths. Korra worried that he was going to faint before he could tell her what was going on.

            "What happened?" Korra cried. "Are you okay? What happened?"

            Bolin said nothing, but Pabu squealed and began clawing insistently at Korra's arms. It was Pabu's reaction that fueled Korra's anxiety. If it had been only her and Bolin, she imagined that she would be okay. If it had been just the two of them, things would have been quiet and calm.

            "Bolin!" Korra shrieked. "What did you do?"

            He shook his head.

            "What does that even mean? Talk to me!"

            Bolin stammered weakly. "I... I don't know."

            "What happened?" Korra insisted.

            "I woke up."

            Bolin had done something to end up on the floor, he had to have done something. There was no way he hadn't, considering how adamant he'd been when he'd told Mako that he'd wanted to die for the last two months.

            She didn't try to dull the edge of anger that came to her voice. "What did you do to yourself?"

            Pabu kept squealing.

            "Bolin! What did you do?"

            He shook his head again, like it was all he could do.

            "Words! Use your words!"

            "Nothing," Bolin stammered. "I didn't do anything."

            "Then why are you on the floor?"

            Bolin grimaced when Korra yelled the words, though Korra wasn't sure if it was a grimace of pain or fear or something else because no matter how she pulled at him or how loudly she shouted at him, he wouldn't raise his head.

            "Bolin!"

            "Stop yelling at me. Give me a minute. Please."

            The last word drained the anger out of her. He'd sounded afraid. His voice had taken on the same horrified quiver it'd taken on when he'd thrown up at Asami's office, when he'd told Su that he was going to fall down. It wasn't a quality that could be faked because it sounded as though it had come from somewhere deep in his middle. He was begging.

            Korra felt the lump growing in her throat, felt the pit opening in the very bottom of her stomach, and she knew that if she said anything else she would start crying. She hated how little control she seemed to have over her emotions because steeling herself had never been a problem before. She'd always been able to channel fear and sadness into anger and determination, but whenever that pitiful, weak voice came out of Bolin's mouth it made her heart swell.

            "Pabu, shut up," Bolin said, the same anguished quivering in his voice, and when he heard his name, Pabu stopped squealing and turned his attention from clawing Korra's arm to investigating Bolin's face with the tip of his nose, and Bolin didn't flinch away from the touch. Instead, he tried to push himself up again and eyed Pabu with what Korra recognized as an expression of sympathy before he finally said, "I'm sorry, Pabs," and hung his head limp again.

            Korra hooked her arm around Bolin's chest, and though he resisted at first, he eventually relented and let her help him sit upright. Korra wasn't about to complain when he dropped his forehead into his hands. He still looked horrible. He looked like death.

            "I think I passed out," he said with effort. "I... I came in here for Pabu and my heart was skipping and then I woke up on the floor."

            "Why?"

            Bolin shook his head again and pressed his hand to the middle of his chest.

            "Is it still weird?"

            Bolin nodded. "It's not as bad as it was," he said between breaths. "It's... I'm okay."

            The anger welled back up and Korra pulled away from him. In the seconds before she exploded she knew he understood, she knew he'd registered the shift in her emotions through whatever weird thing he'd been doing with his earthbending, because he flinched. With his eyes squinted closed, he turned his face away from her. Pabu kept poking his nose against him.

            Korra burst. "What were you thinking back there? You could've killed him! You _know_ how dangerous that was! I know you know! Why would you ever even think to throw those! Mako is your _brother!_ "

            Bolin didn't say anything and his expression didn't change, and that only served to make Korra angrier.

            "He was worried about you, Bo! He was trying to make sure you were okay! He was trying to help you!"

            "I don't want his help," Bolin said in a low, weak grumble.

            "That doesn't mean you have to try to kill him!"

            "I wasn't trying to kill him."

            "Then what _were_ you doing, Bolin? What was that in there? Because the last time you did that, you killed two people! _Two_ , Bolin! With one throw! From, like, twice the distance! So, if you weren't trying to kill him, what were you trying to do?"

            "I wanted him to leave me alone."

            Korra was stupefied.

            "I wanted him to leave me alone," Bolin repeated, desperate now. "And I want you to leave me alone, too."

            "How can I leave you alone?" Korra cried. "Every time I turn around you're doing something stupid! Every time I turn around you're yelling at someone or hitting someone or bending at someone, and if you're not doing that then you're off somewhere plotting ways to kill yourself!"

            Bolin just shook his head. Pabu had started licking at his cheeks in what might have been a comforting way, but Bolin didn't react to it.

            Korra lowered her voice. "I'm getting a lot of mixed messages out of you, Bolin," she growled, "and I don't appreciate it. One minute you're dumping your heart out all over me and the next minute you're shut up tighter than the Republic City Jail!"

            He shook his head again.

            She wasn't sure what she expected, but his lack of reaction left her dumbfounded and angry.

            Bolin drew a deep breath and wrapped his hands around Pabu's middle, pulled the ferret away from his face and looked at him thoughtfully. "You're sending mixed messages, too, Korra," he said. "Why are you even in here?"

            Korra bristled. She understood now how Bolin must have felt in the seconds before he went off. "You told Mako you wanted to die! How can I leave you alone after that! Someone has to make sure you're okay!"

            "If you want me to be okay, then why are you yelling at me?"

            "Because you're acting like a complete idiot! And you keep acting like an idiot and expecting things to change! You have to talk to someone! You have to tell someone what's going on in that mangled, busted up brain of yours or else we can't help you!"

            "I don't want help. You can't help."

            "And then you keep saying that! How do you know we can't help, Bolin? You won't even give us the chance to try!"

            "Yes, I have. We've done all this before."

            Korra balled her hands into fists. Her body had filled to the brim with angry energy.

            "I'm going to ask you again," he said in the same quiet voice, "why are you in here?"

            "I told you already!" Korra roared. "I'm here because--"

            "No," Bolin interrupted. He never raised his voice. The quiet calm that had taken over him set Korra back. It startled the rage straight out of her. "That's not what I mean. I mean that every time I freak out you're absolutely terrified of me, but you keep crawling after me no matter what screwed up things I do. You keep yelling at me and you keep calling me names and insulting me straight to my face, but then you turn around and try to comfort me and you sit with me for hours and hours when my mind shuts off, and you wait for me to come back. So, you tell me, Korra: Beyond making sure I'm still alive, why are you _actually_ in here?"

            Korra stammered. She didn't know what to say. It was like Bolin was calling out the conflict that had been raging inside of her, like he knew it was happening but didn't understand what it was or how to articulate that he knew. And this hadn't been the first time he'd tried to call her on it, either. He'd done it the night she'd told him how he'd kissed her and how it had made her feel so confused, and he'd done it in the caverns below Fire Fountain City when she'd been trying so hard to convince him that she cared about him and wanted him to stay alive.

            She had finally reached a crossroad, and though she didn't know which way to go Korra understood that the decision could be the driving force behind Bolin's recovery, or lack thereof. On one hand, she could deny what she'd been feeling and shut off that part of her as best as she knew how. She could try playing the bad cop and scold him and try to keep him in line with pure brute force. She could keep going as she had been. On the other hand, she could admit everything and hope that maybe if Bolin knew that someone cared about him and his well-being, he'd come around.

            The choice seemed obvious, even if it felt insurmountably difficult.

            Korra dropped her eyes to the ground and fidgeted. "Things have gotten really complicated, and sometimes I'm not really sure what I want when I try to talk to you."

            Bolin eyed her skeptically, but then dropped his gaze back to the floor.

            "I guess that I..." Korra paused and swallowed the nervous lump in her throat. "Well, first of all I need to tell you that I care about you. Well, maybe I don't need to tell you that. You should know that already. I care about you a lot. I mean, it's... It kind of goes beyond that."

            He dropped his head into his hands. "You can stop right there."

            The lump came back twice as big as it had been before, and it inflated even more when Bolin laughed. It wasn't the angry, cold laugh he'd used against Mako. It was a laugh of hopeless resignation. It was a laugh that told Korra that he understood the absurdity of all of this in no uncertain terms.

            "You're not in here because you care about me," he said shrewdly. "I'm not stupid, Korra. Yeah, you might not want me to die but it's not because you want me to be okay. You don't care if I get my head back. You don't care what's going on in my brain because all you care about is what's going on in my pants."

            Korra stammered dumbly. She hadn't expected him to be so on-the-nose. Her face and neck suddenly became very, very warm.

            "Am I wrong?" Bolin asked tersely, and he looked at her narrow-eyed. When Korra didn't respond, he shook his head and dropped it back into his hands. "Well, now that you've made that clear to me, I'm going to make something clear to you: I don't want to talk to you. I don't want to talk to anyone. I mean, you walked in here and found me half-conscious and the minute you figured out that I wasn't dying you started going off on me. I passed out, Korra! I was _unconscious_ and all you care about is making sure I'm in decent shape so that when you finally nut up enough to come at me I'm ready to go!"

            "That's... That's not it at all..."

            "Shut up. I'm done playing this game with you. You can get out of my room and stay out of my life. I'm done talking to you. I'm done talking to all of you."

            Bolin pulled his feet up and pushed Pabu an arm's length away, and then he went about the laborious task of working to stand.

            "Bolin," Korra begged, "stop this. Sit down."

            He didn't stop. He didn't turn. He didn't acknowledge that Korra had spoken at all. Instead, he stood and swayed for a moment while Pabu jumped to his shoulder, then went straight for his bed. When he laid down, he put his back to the room and sighed.

            "Bo," Korra said. She stood and started toward the bed. "Come on. I'm sorry."

            Nothing.         

            Korra knew she shouldn't have found it weird that Bolin wasn't talking. He'd stopped talking to virtually everyone even before the fiasco on Baihe Island, and he'd done a fantastic job of pretending that Opal didn't exist. He'd gotten extremely good at ignoring people, but he'd never ignored Korra before. At one point or another he'd always relented, even if it was just to yell at her.

            She pressed.

            "Bolin, please talk to me. I'll stand here and beg you all night if I have to. I just want to help. I just want to make sure you're okay."

            Nothing.

            "Okay, fine. I'll admit it. Maybe I do have a little... Maybe in the back of my head I kind of think you're... You know..." For some reason Korra couldn't force the truth out of her mouth, so she trailed off lamely. But then she came back as strong as she'd been before. "But that's no reason to shut me out! I care about you, and I care about you because you're my friend!"

            Nothing.

            Pabu looked up at Korra with pitying eyes and he chittered quietly at her, then pawed at the back of Bolin's neck. Korra didn't know what that meant, but when she looked back to Bolin she noted that his jaw had clenched tight and his eyes had narrowed even as he stared at the wall.

            "I care about you. I care about how you're feeling and I want to help you get through this. I want to help you work through what happened on Baihe Island, okay? But I can't do it by myself. I need help from the others, even Su, and more than them, I need help from you. I can't make you better all by myself, but I'm still going to try. Even if you hate me and everything falls apart, I'm going to keep trying. Even if you never speak to me again, I'm going to make this right because... Because I..."

            The door opened, and Korra's admission stopped dead. She rounded, startled, and her heart fell to her feet when Suyin and Mako entered the room. At best, they were here to address what had happened at dinner. They were here because Mako had told Su about everything. He had to have filled her in. Bolin admitted to killing the firebenders right in front of her, and Korra knew Su well enough to understand that she wouldn't budge until she knew the truth in full, especially after all that had already happened. At the worst, they were here to address Baihe Island and then scold Bolin for bending so rashly at Mako.

            Either way, no good could come of them being here. Not after the conversation Korra and Bolin had just had.

            "Guys," Korra said in a voice she hoped would ease the tension they'd brought into the room, "now isn't the best time. Now is a bad time, actually."

            "Now is as good of a time as we're going to have," Su said, and though her words had been stern, her tone remained gentle. "We've spent too long avoiding problems, and they're not going to fix themselves."

            "I'm being serious," Korra said. "Now is a bad, bad time."

            "It always seems to be a bad time," Mako said dryly. Korra noted the irritation on his face. He'd gotten over his horror pretty quickly, all things considered. Korra wondered when Mako had learned how to bounce back so fast.

            Korra knew that there was nothing she could say that would stop them from entering the room. There was nothing she could do that would stop them trying to interact with Bolin, even if he was clearly having none of it.

            "He... He fainted," Korra said, a last-ditch effort to get them to leave. "He was on the floor when I got in here. He needs some space right now."

            It backfired, and Korra knew it at once by the way Su's expression shifted, by the way she stood at the foot of Bolin's bed inspecting him up and down with the discerning eye of a mother. Korra glanced back at Bolin, too. He didn't look any better than he had when he was on the floor. He was still all pale and ashen, except now he was angry.

            "We need to talk," Su said to Bolin in a voice so frightening that Pabu darted under the bed.

            "Su," Korra begged, "not right now. He's sick. His... His heartbeat was..."

            Su held up her hand, and whether she wanted to or not, Korra stopped talking. There was something about Su's expression and her posture that was a little bit scary. It wasn't on par with Bolin when he was scary, but it was close.

            "Bolin, it's time to look at me," Su ordered. "I don't care if you sit up or not, but you and I are having a conversation."

            Bolin didn't move. He didn't flinch. The hardness on his face didn't relent.

            "You need help," Su said. "You need more help than I can give you. You need more than any of us can give you, and I don't know where you're going to get it because you won't talk to anyone."

            "Su," Korra said, "please, stop."

            "So, I need you to tell me, Bolin, what do you want me to do? I'm not going to sit around like I've been doing and watch you fall apart again, because you're not just falling apart in the head anymore. I talked to the healers. That thing going on in your chest right now? That's your body giving out because you won't eat anything, and it's not going to stop there, either."

            Korra looked to Mako. "Mako, help me here. Help me."

            "You stay stressed out all the time," Su hadn't stopped talking even while Korra futilely begged for Mako's help in stopping her. "You're constantly stressed and you're constantly panicking and do you know what that does to your body? You should by now, you've done it enough. Panic makes your heart beat faster. Adrenaline makes your heart beat harder, and guess what, Bolin? That takes energy!"

            Korra crossed the room in three strides and grabbed at Mako's arm, but he looked at her sternly and shook his head. "I couldn't stop her," he said quietly. "I told her what happened in Fire Fountain City and she freaked out, and... Well..." He gestured toward Su. "I followed to make sure things stayed sane."

            Because he'd done such a good job of that, Korra thought. There was nothing sane about this. Su had never yelled at any of them before. She'd scolded them, certainly, and sometimes she expressed her disappointment, but she'd never outright yelled like she was doing now. She looked like she was about to cry.

            "I've been so nice to you through all of this," Su ranted, "but it's not helping, so I'm done being nice! This is me being mean, is that what you wanted? You want someone to yell at you?"

            Bolin didn't move a muscle, and now Korra couldn't even see the look on his face. He hadn't simply gotten good at ignoring people: He'd mastered it.

            "You've got to let some of this out! You keep all this stuff pent up in you, it's no wonder you're so angry and scared all the time! And you know, if you were the same person you were six months ago I'd be a little more relaxed about this, but you're not! You're damaged, Bolin, and no matter how much you and I keep tiptoeing around it, it's the truth. It's unavoidable now. You're unstable, and you've _killed people_. You can't ignore that! You can't handle bottling everything up like you used to, clearly, because you just tried to kill your brother, too!"

            "Bolin wasn't trying to kill him," Korra corrected nervously, and Su glared at her. "He was trying to get Mako to leave him alone. He just wants to be alone."

            When Su rounded on her, Korra stepped back. She wore an expression so intense that Mako stepped back, too, and he wasn't even in the line of fire.

            "You kept this from me, Korra!" Su yelled. "You had how many opportunities to tell me what happened and you didn't! How am I supposed to help when I don't have all the facts? If I'd have known what happened I'd have had every therapist in the city in this room from the moment you touched down!"

            "He doesn't need a--"

            "Then tell me what he needs!"

            "I've been trying to tell you!" Korra cried. "I've been trying to tell you this whole time but you won't listen to me!"

            Now Mako stood straight, and Korra recognized his nervousness. "Ladies," he said, and he raised his hands between them, "this isn't supposed to be a yelling match. Calm down."

            "You want me to leave him alone?" Su cried, scandalized and apparently oblivious to Mako's refereeing. "Is that what you're trying to tell me? He needs to be left alone?"

            Korra nodded sheepishly, and when Su's face dropped, Korra knew the argument was over. In the blink of an eye Su's anger gave out, her brows knitted, and her eyes widened in an uneven combination of concern and sadness. The tears were thick now, and in an odd moment, Korra couldn't help but admire Su's ability to maintain her composure, even if she had just gotten done yelling.

            "You want me to leave him alone?" Su said, a sad quiver in her voice. Then she glanced at Bolin and rubbed the tears from her eyes with the heels of her hands. "Fine. But if he kills himself, it's on you, Korra. If _anything_ happens to him, it's on you."

            Su left far more calmly than she'd entered, and Korra and Mako watched her go. Then they stood in strained silence, and though Korra wanted to say something to break it, she knew if she spoke she'd cry.

            "She didn't mean that," Mako said gently. "It's not your fault, Korra. We know you're trying to help."

            Korra nodded her understanding, and even though Mako's kindness had helped ease the sting, she still felt awful. She still felt like the weight of the world was on her shoulders. She felt like she'd failed, and Bolin's stone still silence didn't help her feel any better.

            Mako patted her on the back, rubbed at her shoulder, and Korra crossed her arms defensively over her chest. It wasn't that she didn't appreciate the gesture, but it certainly felt awkward in the moment. Then again, Mako had never been one to understand the nuance of emotional situations.

            She watched with interest as Mako crossed the room and stood beside Bolin's bed, as Pabu poked his head out and rubbed affectionately against Mako's legs. Mako ignored him.

            "Look, bro," Mako said so quietly that Korra had to strain to hear him, "I get it. You don't want to talk to me. Fine. You're scared. Fine. You're mad. Fine. But that's no reason to attack me. We're all trying to help you, and if you want us to keep trying to help, you'd better stop with the violence. I love you, and I'll forgive you for throwing... Whatever that was... At me, but you'd better know that if you try and pull that crap again I'm going to lay you out."

            Mako sighed deeply, and Korra saw him give the slightest nod of his head before he turned on his heel and marched for the door, his face turned downward. He didn't look mad. He didn't look sad. Korra couldn't pinpoint the emotion, but it was dire enough that he didn't so much as glance at her when he opened the door. Korra knew beyond a measure of doubt that things had hit rock bottom, and she'd been the weight that had pulled it all down.

            She'd give Bolin what he wanted, she decided. She'd leave him alone, even if no one else would.

 

*****

 

            Mako couldn't sleep, but he wasn't sure how hard he was trying. The moment he'd gotten back to his room in the Beifong guest house, he'd flopped on his back, folded his hands behind his head, and stared at the ceiling. Then he began the bitter work of trying not to cry.

            It had been too much. All of this had been too much and it had come too fast, and even if he'd had a thousand years to prepare himself for the truth of it, he still wouldn't have been ready.

            For a while, Mako regretted that he'd come home, and when that initial rush of regret faded away it left a substantial doubt in its wake. Things had been bad when he'd been a part of the Society, but it had only been bad because he stepped out of line and betrayed the mission. If he'd have kept to the mission and stopped trying to play the hero, things would have been fine. He would have been fine. Yaozhu would still be alive. Jing and Fa would still be alive. If he'd stayed in line, right now he'd be lying in his comfortable bed in his and Bingwei's apartment, exhausted after a day of training in the courtyards with his stomach full of absurdly spicy food, and maybe he'd even be looking forward to tomorrow.

            Mako shook his head at himself and rubbed at his face, frustrated. He was being selfish with that line of thinking. Staying on that island wouldn't have changed the truth, it just would have made him blind to it. People would still be being killed and captured in the name of the Fire Nation. Families would still be split apart. Bolin would still be alive and he'd still be irreparably damaged. Mako knew that if he had stayed with the Society he might be happier, yes, but he'd be on the wrong side of the fight. He'd be ignorant of the world outside. He'd still believe that Bolin was dead.

            He wondered if Bolin would have been better off dead, if fate had been cruel in letting him live. It would have been easier on everyone else, certainly. It would have saved everyone a lot of heartache and stress and it would have ended Bolin's suffering, because even if Bolin refused to admit it, he was definitely suffering. And now Mako had seen it, he knew that Bolin was suffering alone, and it had only gotten worse as time had gone by. It had gotten so bad that Bolin didn't even want to live anymore, and it had been that way for weeks.

            Mako clenched his jaw and focused on his breathing. In through the nose, out through the mouth. He wasn't going to cry. Crying wouldn't help.

            Mako wondered if anything would help.

            Talking wouldn't work. That much had been made clear at the dinner table. Bolin had gone from zero to full-blown panic attack in the span of a few sentences, and the change had been so explosive that it had blown Mako's ambitious plans for helping him straight out of his head. It left him empty and afraid. Mako had never seen Bolin so upset, not even when their parents died.

            Su had explained it as happening on a trigger, but Mako could never have known that when that switch flipped Bolin would become an entirely different person. Even when he'd freaked out on the way home from Baihe Island he'd at least seemed like Bolin, even if he'd seemed like a very scared Bolin who'd completely detached from reality.

            Mako had tried to be optimistic. He'd tried being kind and understanding, but Bolin had blown up anyway. It might have been okay if Bolin had left things at yelling, but the second he lavabent, the game was different. Mako decided that he would try to continue being optimistic and he would try to help where he could as best he could, but he hadn't been joking when he warned Bolin about being violent. Bolin had gotten away with that too many times already because it scared the girls away, and it had scared Mako away, too. Bolin lashed out when he was afraid because it had proven an effective way of getting him out of the situation without addressing the problem, or that was Mako's understanding of the matter. It couldn’t be that way anymore.

            Mako was going to make Bolin face the issues, he just wasn't sure how he was going to do it. He fell asleep trying to imagine.

            The next day passed by in a tense quiet. Asami stopped by in the morning to ask if he wanted to join her for breakfast and Mako accepted happily, but he could tell that she was still on edge.

            Asami reported that she and Opal had talked at length after he and Su had left the dining hall, and that after his outburst last night, Opal was fully terrified of Bolin now. That made Mako angry. Then Asami said that she'd heard Korra crying through the wall, but that she'd refused to answer the door when Asami went to check on her. That made Mako angry, too.

            Everything was falling apart, and he hadn't been home for three days yet.

            After breakfast, Mako and Asami went their separate ways. She reassured him that she would check in again with Opal and Korra to make certain they were okay, so Mako decided to go check in on Bolin.

            The very thought of seeing Bolin made his stomach writhe, and that writhing only got worse when he saw four metal clan guards standing outside of Bolin's door. Still, Mako proceeded and the guards greeted him before he knocked, and Mako found himself genuinely surprised when someone answered.

            He was less surprised when that person wasn't Bolin. It was a healer who stepped into the hallway without Mako ever asking him to, and when the healer opened the door Mako could see three men crowded around Bolin's bed. He wondered how many people he couldn't see.

            "I want to see my brother," Mako said as soon as the healer closed the door. "I'd like to talk to him."

            The healer looked downcast. "He's not talking."

            "Well, I want to talk to him anyway. He doesn't have to talk back."

            "I'm sorry. I can't allow you in."

            The writhing in Mako's stomach turned into boiling anger, but he wasn't sure what else he could do. He couldn't force his way in, not with so many guards standing outside the door, and even if he did force his way in they'd just drag him back out again.

            For a few seconds, Mako chewed on his lip and then he sighed. "What can you tell me, then?"

            "About what, sir?"

            Mako gestured impatiently toward the door. "About my brother?"

            "Ah. Well, he's got three bro--"

            "Never mind," Mako said quietly. "Just... Never mind."

            He turned around and walked away so frustrated that he didn't even want to do his daily training. He wanted to pout and brood and be angry, so he marched straight to Su's office, entered without knocking, and sat down on her couch to resume putting together his paperwork. He didn't care that she'd stopped her own work to stare at him dumbly, and he didn't care when she sat opposite him and leveled a dubious eye on him.

            "You and your brother are so different," she said after a while, and Mako did look at her then. She'd reclined a bit, had propped her chin on her hand and let her eyes wander about the room. "Bolin would've started yelling at me five minutes ago for sitting down here and watching him."

            "I'm busy," Mako said. He wasn't in the mood to talk to her right now. He had things to take care of. His written summary of his time with the Society barely covered his stint at the Boiling Rock, and the report wasn't going to write itself.

            "I'm sorry," Su said. Mako looked back at her again, stricken by her genuine regret. "I really am sorry. Here you came home and it's been a complete disaster."

            "It's not a disaster," Mako insisted. "It's a _problem_ , and I'm going to solve it." He went back to his writing, figuring the conversation to be at an end.

            Apparently, Su had other plans. "How are you going to solve it?"

            "Haven't figured it out yet."

            "Are you upset with me?"

            Frustrated all over again, Mako dropped his pen on the table and slumped backward. "What do you want me to say? I'm not over the moon about any of this. Do I like the way you were talking to Bolin last night? No, I don't, but I don't know what else to tell you to do. You've been dealing with this way longer than I have."

            "Fair enough." Su began picking at her nails absently. Mako noted how carefully she avoided eye contact. "I'm sorry that I yelled at him. I'd have told him myself but the healers wouldn't allow me in the room. I suppose I lost my temper and there's no excuse for it. I'm too old to be doing that sort of thing."

            Mako sighed and some of the frustration died away. "They wouldn't let me in, either."

            "He hasn't talked to anyone. I guess that's not all bad. At least he's not threatening people." Su paused and Mako saw her glance at him as though waiting for a response. He offered nothing, and Su continued. "I get upset because I care. I hope you know that. You and Bolin are family, even if it's not official."

            "He and Opal broke up," Mako said dryly. "And I don't exactly see a happy marriage and twenty-five kids in their future right now, either."

            Su shrugged. "Not for lack of trying, I suppose."

            In some alternate reality, Mako might have laughed at the quip.

            "I think we ought to try again," Su said after a moment of awkward quiet, and now Mako looked at her in disbelief. "With dinner."

            "Are you stupid?"

            "Maybe." Clearly, Su didn't take offense at the reactive statement. "I still think we ought to try again but go at things from a different angle. Let's invite him in and have him eat with us, but we'll keep quiet. It'll be a compromise: We won't talk to him about anything scary, but he'll be nearby the way we want."

            For a moment, Mako stared at her in disbelief, but then he understood. Su was desperate. He might have been able to argue with her about his being family to her, but there was no way he'd be able to argue the same for Bolin. How many Beifong family functions had he attended? How many days had he spent at the Beifong estate? How comfortable had he gotten with all of them over the four years he and Opal had been the most disgustingly perfect couple Mako had ever seen?

            He suddenly understood why Su had yelled at Bolin and Korra last night, and the thought brought half a smile unbidden to his face. Su was like a mother moose lion and one of her babies was in trouble. Of course she'd be angry. Of course she'd bare her saber-teeth. It was just unfortunate that Korra had been the one to take the heat. Korra had just been trying to help. She'd just been trying to diffuse the tension. No wonder she'd been crying, being caught with Bolin pulling at her on one side and everyone else pulling at her on the other.

            The half-smile faded away, and Mako felt very sorry for Korra. She hadn't just taken the heat from Su; she'd taken the heat from everyone else, too, and all because she was trying to help. Funny how the Avatar could serve as the bridge between humans and spirits, but couldn't bridge the gap between humans and humans.

            "So, what do you think?" Su asked. "About asking him to dinner again. What do you think?"

            With a sigh, Mako shrugged and grabbed his pen from the table where he'd dropped it. He looked at his paperwork, his brow furrowed in thought. "I think you've already got your mind set on it," he said at last, "so it doesn't really matter what I think. On one hand, it could be good to have Bolin out of his bedroom, even if he doesn't talk to us and we don't talk to him. On the other hand, you'd better make absolutely sure that everyone is on the same page before we ever even try."

            Su nodded. "I respect that."

            "Well, I need you to respect something else, too: I talked to Bo last night after you left, and I told him that if he even thinks to strike at someone the way he struck at me last night, I'm going to make him regret it."

            "Oh."

            "That's not all. You've got to understand that I've got precedent here. The first thing I figured out when he and I ended up on our own was that if I made a threat at him and didn't follow through on it, he'd run me straight over. Anything I threatened, I had to follow through on. I lived by that rule and it never let me down. Kept him out of a heap of trouble with the triads, besides. I don't care if we're not kids anymore, Su. If he even _hints_ that he's going to pull something like he did last night, I'm not going to stand for it."

            "I... I see."

            "If I let him get away with it, I'll lose credibility." Mako sighed and he paused, thinking. "Besides, Bolin needs a constant, no offense to you and the girls. But from everything I've heard, he goes up and down too much. He'll make progress then he gets knocked down. Then he makes progress again and he gets knocked down again. He doesn't have anything to hold on to. People treat him differently all the time--I mean, look at Asami: One day she spends something like six hours just _sitting_ with him and the next day she _hates_ him. She told me that. That happened the day he threatened Opal."

            Su didn't say anything when Mako paused.

            "I guess what I'm trying to say is that someone's got to put him in his place and they've got to be consistent. May as well be me, as I figure. I'm new in the picture and he doesn't know what to expect out of me yet. He knows what gets to you guys. If I'm tough with him I can keep him on the straight and narrow, if you get my drift."

            This time, when Mako looked at Su she'd started to smile gently. It wasn't the reaction he thought she'd have, and his face screwed up in confusion.

            "What?"

            "Don't ever tell her I said it, but you're so much like Lin it's scary."

            Mako opened his mouth to say something, but closed it again before anything came out. He wasn't sure if he should be flattered or insulted by that comment, and it seemed that Su understood his confusion, because she laughed at him.

            "I mean that in the nicest way," she clarified, then she paused thoughtfully. "You're a good brother. You look out for Bolin the same way Lin tried to look out for me, and you're willing to be the bad guy to make sure that things work out. It's very noble of you."

            Mako raised his eyebrow. "That's the first time anyone's used _that_ word on me."

            "It's true, though," Su said, then she stood. "You see to your paperwork, detective. I'll go make the arrangements for dinner, and I'll make sure that everyone is on the same page: No talking about anything offensive unless Bolin talks first, and if anyone can't agree with that they can eat in their room."

            Mako wasn't sure what good it would do, but Su left before he could protest. Then there was nothing left for him to do but work and brace himself for the inevitable.

            By dinnertime Mako was so nervous that he sat on the edge of his chair even after their food had been served and Bolin was nowhere to be found. Asami, Opal, and Korra were nowhere to be found, either, and that told Mako more about the situation than anything so far. What had happened last night had been the breaking point. Everything the girls had told him about had been stacking up since Bolin had been attacked, and they'd been as patient as they possibly could. They'd watched him assault each other verbally and physically and they'd dealt with all the fallout. They'd watched him kill dozens of people. But his flinging the lava shards had broken their patience. Bolin had brought the terror of Fire Fountain City into the fortress of Zaofu. He had corrupted the safety of Su's own home, and there was no bringing it back.

            That had Mako feeling vaguely angry.

            Su wasn’t much good for conversation. She seemed disappointed that no one had shown up, but Mako wasn't going to ask her about it. So, they ate for a while in silence, and when Mako's plate was nearly clear, the door opened and Bolin entered with two escorts instead of one. They stayed until Su shooed them away with a very quiet, "Thank you," and then the tense quiet fell again.

            Mako didn't greet Bolin when he entered, and neither did Su. Bolin took his customary seat at the table and stared at his hands until the chef brought out a bowl, and even then, he didn't look up. He examined the bowl's contents for a few minutes, and while he was distracted, Mako looked to Su for some guidance, but she just shrugged. It seemed that neither of them knew exactly how to proceed.

            Bolin didn't eat. He didn't touch the bowl at all. He just sat there staring at his hands as though waiting to be dismissed.

            Su drew a very deep breath and cleared her throat quietly. Then she looked to Mako, then she looked to Bolin, and she said, "You really ought to eat, Bolin."

            He didn't do anything. He didn't even twitch.

            Again, Su looked to Mako, but Mako shrugged. He wasn't sure exactly what she was trying to accomplish, but he knew that she was going against every rule they had set down for this dinner. Still, the girls weren't there, and that had to count for something if Bolin blew up.

            "Please eat," Su said, a little louder this time, a little more insistent. "You look awful. I think you'll feel better if you try to eat."

            Bolin did twitch this time, but the movement was so understated that for a second, Mako thought he'd been seeing things. It was the look on Bolin's face that gave him away, the subtle way that his brow furrowed and his eyes narrowed. It wasn't the way it had been last night, but it was there all the same, and it set Mako to attention.

            He shot a glance of warning at Su, and she nodded back at him. But then she looked back to Bolin and set her jaw.

            "Would you like me to have it sent to your room?" Su asked.

            Nothing.

            "If you don't eat, the healers are going to force it into you," she said, and Mako noticed Bolin's shoulders raise. He shot Su another look, but she didn't see it. She persisted. "If you're not comfortable here, you can go back to your room and I'll have your dinner sent. It's your choice."

            If Su had been a fraction of a second slower, the bowl would have smashed straight into her face instead of the wall where it shattered and splattered its contents all over the place.

            That was it.

            Mako didn't wait for Su to recover before he stood. Bolin was already on his way to the door, and there was no way he was leaving without at least an apology.

            Bolin had begun opening the door when Mako got there, and with all the strength he could muster, Mako planted his hand flat against it and slammed it back closed, and Bolin glared at him with the same deadly eyes he'd had last night. This time, they weren't scary. This time, they made Mako angry.

            "Apologize," Mako ordered. "Apologize right now."

            Bolin didn't say anything. He kept glaring, and Mako noted the increasing intensity in his eyes. This was escalating, and there was a part of Mako that didn't even care. There was a part of him that wanted it to escalate just so he could show Bolin who was really in charge, just so he could put Bolin in his place and try to set things right.

            "Bolin, you can't eat as a guest in someone's house and _throw your dinner at them_. I raised you better than that."

            Mako didn't know that Bolin's eyes could narrow so far or that so much tension could wind up in him. He certainly hadn't expected Bolin to say anything, but he effectively growled a statement that made Mako's blood boil.

            "You didn't raise me at all."

            From across the room, Mako heard Su's chair legs scraping across the floor. "Boys," she said in warning.

            They stared at each other. They'd stared at each other like this before, and Mako knew it. It was the stare before a fight, but he wasn't sure if this was going to get physical. Part of him hoped it wouldn't. Part of him hoped it would.

            Bolin seemed to swell the longer Mako held his gaze.

            "All you've got to do is apologize and I'll let you leave."

            Bolin fumed. His hands balled into fists at his side. Mako noticed and made himself as tall as he could. If he was bigger than Bolin for once in his life, he was going to take advantage of it.

            "Boys," Su said again, a little louder and a little more insistent this time. "Boys, don't."

            "Listen, little brother, I know that look. If you even _think_ about hitting me you're going to regret it. Now apologize and we can leave this right here."

            Mako was ready for it, and if he'd been surprised by Bolin's speed he was positively dumbfounded by his own. Bolin threw the punch with abandon, with all the tension his body had held behind it, but Mako caught his hand and held it tight. Then he yanked open the dining hall door and threw Bolin outside.

            "I warned you."

            Bolin pulled the earth from the ground before Mako had even finished his statement, but Mako easily swatted the projectile aside. As Mako made his way into the yard, Bolin pelted him over and over, and every time Mako dodged or blocked, Mako's own indignation grew until he, too, felt like he'd burst.

            "Why are you doing this?" Mako shouted as Bolin chucked another slab at him. He ducked beneath it. "How can you possibly be stupid enough to fight with me over something so small? Is it pride? Is that what it is?"

            Bolin said nothing, but threw another stone instead.

            "Are you seriously ready to throw everything away to win an argument, Bo? Are you going to fight with me just to avoid talking?"

            A stone whizzed by Mako's head, and he took that as a yes.

            Mako engaged in full, and as he blasted well-timed bolts of fire through the yard he noted with interest the weakness of Bolin's bending. It was reckless and sloppy. He heaved stones from anywhere and everywhere and seemed to be more concerned with how many he threw than whether they hit the mark. If Mako hadn't known better, he'd think Bolin was blind. If he hadn't known better, he'd think Bolin wasn't trying. His shots had never been so easy to dodge.

            A huge lump of rock came flying toward him a little too high, and as Mako ducked beneath it he lunged forward. He charged with as much speed as he could, caught Bolin around the waist, and both went down.

            The impact had clearly hurt, if the look on Bolin's face served as any indication, but it didn't slow him down. Whatever weakness existed in Bolin's bending didn't necessarily carry over to his wrestling, because even with his substantial injury, Bolin managed to plant his feet beneath Mako's middle and heave him feet first over his own head, and Mako landed hard. Then Bolin was on top of him, winding up for an enormous punch that would certainly have put Mako well out of the fight.

            It felt dirty, but Mako knew all too well that there was no honor in fights between siblings. He struck out with his palm, connecting solidly with Bolin's ribs.

            Bolin dropped at once, clutching at his side and panting and grimacing such that Mako felt guilty about having hit him. But that wasn't the point of this. The point of this was to get it through to Bolin how stupid he'd been acting, even if it required a few kicks in the head.

            Mako scrambled to his feet, and as he towered over his brother and listened to Su yelling at them to stop, he couldn't help yelling himself.

            "I haven’t been home for three days and you've done nothing but act like a total jerk!" Mako roared. "And apparently all you've done for the last two months is act like a total jerk! I'm ashamed of you! You should be ashamed of yourself! How could you ever think what you've been doing is a good idea?"

            Bolin didn't say anything. It seemed that he was putting all his concentration into standing back up. If anything, Mako admired his little brother's tenacity.

            "And now you're fighting with me because I asked you to apologize for being a jerk? I never knew you were such an idiot!"

            "I hate you."

            Mako stopped dead, stunned by words he wasn't even sure he'd heard correctly. Bolin hadn't looked up from the ground. He'd gained his feet and settled, slightly bent and grasping his side with both hands. Mako hadn't seen him say the words. Bolin was breathing too hard to have said the words.

            "I hate you!"

            There was no mistaking it this time. Bolin had uttered the words in a low, feral growl that, if he hadn't been so wound up, would've made Mako's hair stand on end. Instead, it made Mako angrier.

            "How can you possibly hate me? You should hate _yourself!_ You've done nothing but ruin your life since I've been gone and now that I'm here trying to help you fix it you're shutting me out!"

            Mako was on his back on the ground before he ever realized Bolin was charging, and before he'd realized he was on his back on the ground he'd taken two punches to the head.

            If there was ever a bright side to any of this, at least Bolin's blind rage ruined his ability to aim.

            As Bolin wound up for a third strike, Mako considered hitting him in the ribs again. He opted against it, worried he might cause some damage, so when Bolin's fist came down Mako grabbed it, wrenched it off to the side, and kneed Bolin off him.

            They were back on their feet in seconds, and though Mako was truly no worse for the wear--a minor headache from the punching notwithstanding--Bolin was clearly winded.

            "How could you have let yourself get so out of shape, Bo?" Mako chided. "It's pitiful. You take so much pride in being a big tough guy and intimidating a bunch of girls, but where's your pride in yourself? Where's your self-respect? Man up a little bit and accept that you screwed up!"

            Again, Bolin made the first move, a sloppy earthbending trick that might at one point have knocked Mako off his feet. But Mako kept his balance, dodged another two bricks, and thrust his hands forward to produce an enormous ball of flame that sent Bolin staggering.

            By now Su had stopped shouting, and out of the corner of his eye, Mako thought he saw Asami and Korra standing nearby. He glanced over, rubbed at the spot where Bolin had punched him, and turned his attention back to the fight.

            There was no contest here, and Mako knew it. He could end this any time he wanted in any number of ways, be it a blow to Bolin's ribs or a quick shot of lightning or a simple hook into the side of Bolin's head. Bolin would never be able to dodge, not in a million years. Between his injured ribs and his sore leg and his general weakness from not eating or sleeping, there was no way short of a miracle that Bolin would ever come out on top of this. But Mako wouldn't end it, not yet. Clearly, Bolin had something he needed to get out of his system, and maybe this was the way to do it. Let him take out his anger on someone who could handle it. Let him take out his anger on someone who'd dish it right back up and throw it back in his face.

            "And you know what?" Mako went on as Bolin recovered from his latest stumble. "The fact that you trashed your body isn't even the worst part of this whole monkey-rat circus you've got going on! Never mind how you've been treating yourself! How could you treat Su so badly? She's done nothing but help you and you've been nothing but an ungrateful little brat! And what the heck kind of game are you pulling with Korra? You're using her to push Opal away and... Opal was the best thing that ever happened to you! And you threw her away, _literally!_ What were you thinking?"

            "What were _you_ thinking, Mako!"

            Mako wasn't sure what caused him to take the most pause, if it was the wavering desperation in Bolin's yelling, the fact that it looked like he was crying, or that he'd spoken at all. Mako didn't understand, and it seemed to him that Bolin knew it.

            "You abandoned us! You left us!"

            "What are you talking about?"

            "You could've stayed in Republic City! You could have stayed with Lin instead of going back to that hole in the dirt prison camp you were living in! Why'd you do it? Did you replace us? What could possibly have been worth abandoning me? Was there some hot girl in your bed?"

            That made Mako very, very angry, and it was his turn to charge in blind rage. He knew better but couldn't contain it. He hadn't expected Bolin to shove that truth in his face, and he hadn't expected that it would hurt so badly to remember it.

            All the finesse that had once existed in the fight was gone. There wasn't even bending anymore. It all went to punching and rolling, standing up and yelling, tackling each other again, then wrestling some more, and though Mako maintained the upper hand quite easily, there were times when Bolin said something or did something that stunned him long enough for Bolin to get a shot in.

            "You should've stayed!" Bolin cried when Mako kicked him to the ground again.

            "I didn't have a choice!" Mako yelled in return. "I had to go back! I had people there that needed me!"

            " _I_ needed you!"

            "I thought you were dead!"

            "I _should_ be!"

            A thousand rage-induced responses came to Mako's mind when Bolin said that. It was all cold-hearted jabs at Bolin's mental state and cheap shots at Bolin's self-image and legitimate excuses about how depressed and lost he'd been himself when Toru had told him that Bolin was dead, how he'd needed comfort and had gotten it anywhere he could. It all made Mako rage. It all filled him up with a horrible, uncontrollable anger. This was his little brother. His little brother was so blind and stupid and caught up in his own pity party that he couldn't see the good things he had for what they were.

            Mako rushed in again, and then they were both back on the ground. This time Mako heard the girls gasping and yelling at them, and once, when he'd gotten atop Bolin and saw Korra rushing forward to break them up he yelled at her to stay out of it, and Korra had all but skidded to a halt.

            His head was beginning to hurt. He was beginning to tire. And if Mako knew that he was starting to wear out, he couldn't imagine how Bolin must be feeling. He couldn't imagine what sort of inhuman anger had kept Bolin fighting. In a way, it was impressive, but Mako needed to end it.

            Back on their feet, Mako provided as much warning as he was going to.

            "Give up, Bo," he said in a low voice. "You can't win this."

            "I don't care!" Bolin cried in reply. "I don't care if I win!"

            There was an obviously implied, "as long as I get to hit you," tagged onto the end of that, Mako knew.

            Bolin presented Mako with a flawless opportunity at once when he charged in for another tackle. Mako easily sidestepped left of the lunge, grabbed Bolin rough by the arm, and threw him to the ground. Then, as he'd done countless times before, Mako planted his knee dead in the middle of Bolin's back and pressed all his weight on it, pinned his left shoulder to the ground, and wrenched his other arm backward.

            "Now you listen to me," Mako said in as threatening a tone as he could muster, "and you listen real close. I'm tired of dealing with you acting like a bully and I'm not going to stand for it anymore."

            Bolin squirmed. "Mako!"

            "So, here's how this is going to go," Mako continued, ignoring Bolin's begging and squirming. "You're going to play nice. You're going to stop yelling at people and you're going to stop earthbending at people. You're going to stop hitting people. Do you understand?"

            "Mako!"

            Bolin squirmed again, more forcefully this time, and Mako pressed harder on his back and pulled harder on his arm. Mako wasn't going to let Bolin out of this. Mako had Bolin in exactly the position he needed, in a position of submission, in a position where he wouldn't be let free until he agreed to the terms. It was a position from which Mako could make his point abundantly clear.

            "Do you understand me, Bolin?"

            "Mako!" Bolin cried, and now his squirming had changed to desperate writhing. He grasped at the ground with his free hand in a feeble attempt to push himself up, tried to get his legs beneath him, but Mako pulled harder on his arm and he fell back down.

            "I'm not letting you go until you promise!"

            Bolin writhed, and Mako pulled, and a great many things happened all at once.

            Mako felt something give, something sick and fleshy and grinding through Bolin's arm, and then the resistance was gone.

            A noise came out of Bolin that made Mako want to throw up. It stopped his anger in its tracks at the same time Bolin went very still and very quiet.

            The girls screamed at him. They didn't sound worried or concerned as they had when they'd yelled at him before. Now they sounded mortified.

            Before Mako could release Bolin's arm, Opal got in the best hit of the whole fight. He hadn't even known she was there, much less that she had so much strength in her. But he felt the impact as she shoved him with all her might, and then he was on the ground in a confused haze, breathless from the collision, listening to footsteps rushing in and the girls crying out in a jumble of words he couldn't understand.

            "Korra, help me! I don't know how to do this!"

            What Mako saw when he finally looked up shocked him stupid. Bolin wasn't moving, and Opal and Korra were presently working together to put him on his back. But his arm was wrong. His arm was gross and misaligned.

            Frantic, Mako looked between Bolin and Korra and Opal. Then Asami was beside him poking at his face with a towel and Su kneeled and put her hand on his back, and Mako felt himself filling up with anxiety despite Su's gentle consolation.

            Bolin had barely been on his back for two seconds when he woke up, and though he didn't scream he certainly looked like he wanted to. At least, it looked like it before Bolin clapped his left hand over his face and made pained noises the likes of which Mako had never heard come out of him before.

            Terrified, Mako looked to Asami, but she was too focused on cleaning him up to offer a response. Then he looked to Su and she patted him on the arm.

            Mako stammered stupidly, confused and afraid and unable to find a word that would appropriately convey his revulsion.

            "Mako, it's fine," Su said coolly. "I know it doesn't look like it, but it's okay."

            Mako didn't know how Su could remain so calm when Bolin's arm was all gross and out of alignment and Korra was pulling on it while Bolin struggled to keep from making noises of distress with his hand clamped over his face enough to cover his eyes but not enough to cover his agonized grimace. Mako didn't know how they could be so calm. He didn't know how anything about this could possibly be _fine_.

            Mako stammered again, and when Asami dabbed at his forehead he pushed her hand gently away. He couldn't take his eyes off the gruesome scene playing out in front of him.

            He opened his mouth, then he closed it again. Then he opened it and looked to Su, and she shushed him. Finally, he managed to spit out the words that had clogged up the rest of his brain and kept him from understanding.

            "I... I broke him."


	42. The Point of No Return

            "I... I broke him."

            "You didn't break him, Mako."

            "I ripped his arm off!"

            "You didn't rip his arm off."

            Bolin lay listening to Su and Mako arguing over the state of his shoulder, his hand over his face to hide his twisted, anguished expression. He had to focus on something to keep his mind off the pain searing through his body. If it wasn't bad enough that his shoulder had been wrenched straight out of joint, Mako had tossed him and tackled him and knocked the wind out of him, and every part of him felt bruised and tender. Worst of all was the deep, intense throbbing in his ribs where Mako had connected with his palm. That pain made it hard to breathe. That pain made it hard to stay conscious.

            "I'm going to pull now, Bo," Korra said quietly, nervously. "Do you want me to give you a count?"

            Bolin wanted to yell at her but couldn't make the words. His jaw was clenched too hard to make the words.

            Opal spoke for him, though she conveyed the message far more politely than Bolin would have. "Korra, just do it."

            Korra's grip tightened around his wrist, tightened around his elbow, and she planted her foot against his side the way he'd told her to do it the first time she'd put his arm back in, but this time it was torture. He tried with all his might to hold in whatever noise was building in his chest, but when Korra heaved, his brain blanked and he heard the noise come out of him anyway, a scream muffled by his gritted teeth and his hand over his face and sheer dumb willpower.

            He wasn't sure if he fainted or not. If he did, he wasn’t out for long because when his brain came back Korra was still hanging on to his wrist and elbow and her foot was still propped against him, but she'd stopped pulling and the searing in his shoulder had reduced to the familiar dull, mind-numbing ache that spread halfway down his back. After he recognized the pain, Bolin knew his shoulder was back in, and then the rest of his body seemed to wake up. At some point while Korra was setting his arm he'd curled even while lying on his back, such that his knees were up and his feet and left shoulder were off the ground and his stomach hurt from the muscles clenching so hard.

            "Is it in?" Korra cried. "Did I get it?"

            Bolin let his body go slack, let his feet fall back to the ground and his hand fall away from his face. He nodded and lay there panting and exhausted.

            "Why didn't anyone tell me it was already hurt? I'd never have pulled on it if I knew! I'd at least have pulled on the other one!"

            It seemed that Mako's indignant arguing hadn't stopped even while Korra was setting Bolin's arm, but Bolin hadn't heard most of it. He raised his head and watched.

            "I thought it was healed!" Su replied. "He had a brace that he wore on it to keep it in, he wore it all the time every single day, even when he slept, and I thought since he didn't have it on that it was better!"

            "He broke it," Asami said, deadpan and downcast. "He broke the brace in Fire Fountain City and we ditched it with his shoes."

            It hadn't been an exact recollection of what happened, Bolin thought, but it was good enough to make the point.

            "And nobody thought it was a good idea to tell me?"

            "Well," Asami said, still very calm, "to be fair, none of us knew you were going to yank on it like that."

            Bolin let his head fall back to the ground and he closed his eyes. He didn't have the energy to hold it up for much longer, and everything had started spinning besides.

            Now that the chaos had stopped and his shoulder had been set, Bolin's mind opened again. He'd snapped at Su, he remembered that much. She'd made some offhand comment about him having choices, and no sooner had the words come out of her than he was on his feet and the bowl had already smashed against the wall, and in the panic that followed immediately after, he'd tried to run. That was how all of this started. And Mako had put it to an end.

            Bolin hated himself all over again. Su had been trying to help. She'd been trying to provide him with an option that would keep him on the level and might make him feel comfortable, but he'd been so distrusting that he hadn't believed her. He hated himself because in the heat of the moment he couldn't distinguish between which feelings inside of him were genuine and which feelings came because of the damage to his brain. Since the day they'd arrived back in Zaofu, Bolin's mind had been set solely on protecting the people he cared about from himself, and he'd been so dedicated to that cause that he ended up hurting them even more, and now it had all culminated with another attack against Su and an all-out brawl with Mako.

            He'd failed. He'd failed again.

            A persistent, angry voice in the back of his head wouldn't stop reminding him how badly he'd failed at everything he'd attempted to do. It was the voice that told him to give up, stop fighting, and give in to the void. It told him he was worthless and helpless and didn't deserve the compassion that the others were attempting to give him. It told him that the only solution to his many, many problems was to fade away and die because he'd hurt everyone he'd cared about and lost sight of who he was, and in his blindness had become a heartless murderer undeserving of the tiniest inkling of happiness.

            But there was another voice, too, a kinder, softer voice that hummed along in the deeper recesses and told him that it wasn't all his fault. It was the voice that had taken over in Fire Fountain City when he'd lost track of reality and given in to the belief that everything he'd seen and experienced had been a terrible dream. It was the part of his brain that couldn't believe himself to be capable of cold-blooded murder. It was the part that believed he could still save himself and redeem himself and crawl out from the void.

            The voices argued with each other. They argued violently and filled Bolin's head with noise through which he could discern no meaning. The arguing filled him with conflicting emotions of hate and confusion and despair, and through it all he didn't know what to do. He didn't know if he should hate himself or if he should hate Mako or if he was perfectly justified in hating everyone.

            No matter how hard he tried to argue himself away from it, Bolin hated everyone. He hated everyone including himself because he'd started the fight and nobody had stopped it. Nobody had stopped him though they were all more than capable of doing it. Bolin had heard Su yelling at them, but she could have done so much more. She could've stepped in to separate Bolin and Mako and prevent the fight from the very start. Then he'd seen the girls rushing out from their guest rooms, and they'd simply stood there gaping. Even if none of them could have stopped the fight independently, certainly the three of them could've stopped it if they worked together.

            The hateful voice drowned out the other, and through its persistent call Bolin connected the physical pain to emotions of rage and indignation, and even as he lay there on the concrete he wanted to stand up and scream at all of them all over again. If they had just listened to what he'd been telling them the whole time, none of this would've happened. If they'd have left him alone and let him spend the night in his room all by himself without forcing him to attend _family dinners_ with metalbending escorts, his shoulder wouldn't be aching and his ribs wouldn't feel like they were going to explode.

            He was a monster, and they should have known it. He was an uncontrollable beast who needed to be left alone, who should never be confronted without extreme caution, and they'd brought him into the open and provoked him until he'd lashed out. It had been their fault just as much as it was his, because there was no changing the fact that he was insane, and if he was frightened or stressed he would lash out until he killed someone else.

            This was all their fault.

            He couldn't be controlled, not by himself and not by anyone else.

            He had to get away. He had to get away to protect them.

            He had to run.

            "Bo?"

            Opal had leaned close to him, but she didn't make the thoughts stop.

            The quieter of the voices chimed in as Bolin lay there, and it tried futilely to revoke the hateful's claim. He hadn't meant to hurt anyone. He hadn't meant to do what he'd done to Su and he hadn't wanted to fight with Mako. Mako had prevented him from leaving and finding his peace when Bolin recognized he needed it, and that was what had caused him to strike out. It wasn't because he was an animal, it was because he'd been afraid and uncomfortable and needed space to get his head back together, and because Mako didn't understand. It hadn't been anyone's fault. It was all part of learning how to deal with the person Bolin had become.

            The gentle voice told him that he could fix this. He could fix himself if he took the time and admitted the issues. It begged him to ask for help and throw himself at the feet of the people he'd frightened and hurt, and it assured him that they loved him and that everything would be okay in the end, if only he made the effort and humbled himself to their mercy.

            But when Bolin looked up into Korra and Opal's worried, mildly frightened faces, that quiet voice faded away again. He couldn't fix it if they were afraid of him. He couldn't talk to them if they were afraid of him. They wouldn't stay around. He'd hurt them too many times because he was an animal unworthy of compassion.

            Opal put her hands on his arm, but Bolin didn't react to the touch. He barely registered the touch at all. All his focus had turned inward toward the arguing in his head, and he squinted his eyes closed and tried with all his might to force his brain to silence. He couldn't think with all the noise. He couldn't sort through the things the voices were telling him.

            The voices didn't quiet. They argued back and forth that he was a murderer, but that he'd killed in self-defense and in defense of the people he loved more than life itself. They argued that he didn't deserve love from anyone and that he'd never love himself again, but that he was just lost and confused because he'd changed in the wake of the collapse, and that nobody had stopped loving him except for himself. For every point the angry voice presented, the gentle voice provided a rebuttal, and the arguments escalated until Bolin's head filled with indistinguishable noise and a pressure so enormous he felt for certain that his skull would burst.

            "Stop it! Shut up!"

            Bolin felt Opal fall away from him, startled, and land on her rump on the ground beside him. He'd heard the crazed shriek come out of his mouth but hadn't realized that he was saying words. He'd meant to keep them in. He'd meant to yell inwardly at the conflicting sides of his mind to shut them up for good, but the words had come out of his mouth as plain as day, and even if he wanted to convince himself that they hadn't, the aching strain in his throat was proof enough alone.

            All at once, Bolin pushed himself to sit, drew his knees to his chest, and dropped his forehead atop them. It was a position of comfort anymore, the tiny, fetal ball that he curled into whenever people were watching him fall apart. He clamped his hands behind his head and squinted his eyes closed even harder. The arguing wouldn't stop.

            He was a killer.

            He deserved to get better.

            He was a threat to everyone he'd ever known or loved.

            The only people who could help him to heal were the people he'd hurt.

            He had to get away from them before he hurt them again. He had to get away from them before he killed them.

            He wasn't capable of killing someone he loved. He'd only killed the firebenders because they'd threatened his life and the lives of the people he cared about.

            He'd hurt them, even if he tried not to. He scared them.

            They would forgive him.

            He couldn't forgive himself.

            He _wouldn't_ forgive himself.

            He was a failure.

            He needed to give himself grace.

            If Bolin had been aware of the world outside of his own conflicted brain he'd have understood just how silent the others had gone in the face of his sudden and constantly intensifying mania. If he'd been aware of the scene he was making simply by sitting there, rocking forward and back and clutching crazily at his head, he'd have kept as quiet as he could. But he didn't. He couldn't. He couldn't feel their fear through the ground because his mind was so full and chaotic and confused.

            "Shut up!" He cried, and he clutched even harder at the back of his head. "Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!"

            His throat ached. It was all he could feel outside of the fear welling up in his chest. He didn't want to keep yelling but he didn't know any other way to make the voices be quiet. He didn't know how to make the warring sides of his brain stop fighting. He had to drown them out.

            "Shut up!" Bolin screamed again. "Shut up! Shut--"

            Someone forced their way into his tiny little ball, pushed through his arms, clamped their hand over his mouth and held it tight so that Bolin couldn't make a noise even if he tried. All he could do was breathe frantic, panicked breaths through his nose and hate himself for being incapable of subduing the crazy before it boiled over and spilled out of him.

            "Nobody is saying anything, Bo."

            It was Mako's hand clamped over his mouth. And now that Mako was there, Bolin hated him, too. He hated Mako more than he'd ever hated anyone. He might've hated Mako even more than he hated himself. At the very least, he hated Mako more than he had before they'd gone to Fire Fountain City, because not only had Mako abandoned all of them in favor of the terrorists who'd kidnapped him and stolen Bolin's brain, now he'd embarrassed Bolin in front of everyone he cared about. It hadn't been a fair fight and Mako knew it. Of course, he won. He'd eaten dinner. He'd slept. He didn't have broken ribs and a bum shoulder and a perpetually aching arm and leg whose abrasions had only just been healed. And now he'd invaded Bolin's mind and forced him to quiet and drawn attention to the fact that he'd been falling apart all over again.

            Bolin thrashed. He had to get away so that he could run. He had to get away so that he could fall apart alone and pick up the pieces by himself. He had to get away so that he didn't hurt anyone in his insanity. He had to get away so he could understand what was happening to him.

            The initial squirm caught Mako off guard, Bolin knew, because Mako's grip failed and Bolin managed to shift his weight to stand and dart away. Mako's surprise didn't last long enough. Before Bolin could run, Mako's hand was on his chest, and then Bolin was flat on his back on the ground again.

            "Opal, go!"

            Bolin didn't know who'd yelled, but he grounded his feet and felt Opal running away. He felt Mako's full weight bearing down on his stomach and then felt Korra's weight on his legs, and he thrashed again. He had to get free. He had to get away.

            "Stop it!" Bolin shrieked. "Stop! Let me go!"

            All at once Mako grabbed Bolin's wrists and forced them flat to the ground either side of his head with strength against which Bolin knew he'd never win. Mako had even been delicate with Bolin's right arm, but he'd forced them down easily, planted his knees on Bolin's elbows, and held him fast.

            Nobody yelled at him, and Bolin found that oddly surprising. The whole place was quiet except for his own terrified struggling.

            Then, to his horror, something cold pressed against his wrists and his ankles, and once it settled into place, Mako and Korra retreated. It was metal. He knew the feel of it too well. Su had restrained him the same way she'd restrained him the day he'd hit her. She was holding him to the ground with metalbending and he hated her for it. It was unfair for her to use that against him because he couldn't defend against it.

            Bolin didn't look at them. He couldn't bear to. He clenched his jaw and squinted his eyes closed and lay there wishing that the yelling in his brain would stop. He wanted to disappear and for everyone to forget he'd ever existed. He wished that everyone would forget him like the bad dream that he was.

            Opal came rushing back moments later, and Bolin could feel that there were people with her. He didn't know who they were. He didn't recognize their vibrations, but he didn't care enough to open his eyes and identify them. He pulled weakly against his restraints. His shoulder and ribs hurt too badly for him to continue thrashing as he'd been doing. He pulled and he grimaced when he felt the joint separating, and he didn't fight against it when the strange people pressed against his chest the same way Mako had done.

            Bolin didn't know why or how, but he couldn't fight back anymore. All the strength went out of him. His limbs became strangely, familiarly heavy, and Bolin suddenly knew who it was that Opal had gone to get. It was the healers. She'd gone to get the healers, and they'd subdued him the same way they'd subdued him the last time he'd fought against their control.

            He didn't fight it.

            At least it would make the voices stop.

            Bolin dreamed of his visit to the South Pole, when Katara had knocked his bending loose and caused a rain of horrible thoughts and emotions to run through him. He dreamed of that night in the healing hut when she'd instructed him to face his problems as they came, to deal with the emotions they invoked one by one before the issues compounded and grew too big to handle.

            Even in the dream, Bolin knew he'd failed her. The angry voice took hold and berated him. He'd not heeded her advice and now there was a pile of trouble before him that he needed to pick apart. He needed to sort through it all before he could ever think about how to fix it, and that meant he'd have to cast some of it aside and return later when the pile was a little bit smaller.

            That meant fixing himself, but the hateful voice told him he couldn't. If he'd learned anything from his time in Zaofu, it was that he needed to fix himself by himself both as a matter of pride and a matter of practicality, but no one would let him go and no one could help. No one else could know what was going on inside of his mind because he couldn't articulate the jumble of thoughts and feelings that stopped up his brain. He was too stupid to articulate it. And in his silence, everyone had tried to make assumptions, but their assumptions had missed the mark by a wide margin and often served to hurt more than they helped.

            He had to get away from them before they hurt things even more. He had to take control over his own recovery. The only way to do it was to go, and the only way to go was to keep the distance, even if it meant burning the few bridges he still had left.

            Bolin dreamed of how it would be when he was gone, and all he saw was the others being happy for the first time in months. His departure would ease their suffering, even if it wouldn't ease his own. The hateful voice was appeased because it had been right the whole time.

            Bolin woke with a familiar, depressed heaviness in his chest, and between that and the mind-numbing effects of the sedative he didn't accomplish much in the way of thinking. He spent the remainder of his night in utter silence and synthetic calm, even when the visitors came. Asami showed up and spent the better part of half an hour cleaning up the myriad scrapes and cuts Mako had wrought on him. Much to Bolin's delight she remained silent the entire time, though he didn't know if it was because she had nothing to say, because she was scared, or because she thought him to be too brain-dead to speak.

            Opal came in the few minutes before Asami left bearing an assortment of foods that she explained very slowly had been sent by her mother, and if he ate them was completely up to him. Bolin remembered a time a million years ago when Su had offered to send his dinner to his room if he wasn't feeling comfortable, and he felt guilty that she'd kept her promise despite his violent outburst. She'd been trying to help. He'd attacked her for her good intentions. He was a monster.

            They left after a while, and Bolin spent the rest of the night alone, tentatively sipping at the cups Opal had brought and hoping that pacing himself would stave off the nausea. Eventually he couldn't fight off the sleepiness anymore. He fell back against his pillow with the aching in his body outweighing the aching in his stomach, and he slept again.

 

            Next day, the voices had quieted to a low rumble in the back of his mind. It was good. There was some calm.

            Bolin didn't expect anyone aside from the healers to visit him, not if Mako or Su explained what had caused their fighting, and he decided that if anyone did come to see him he'd either ignore them or push them away. When Mako knocked on his door and entered after noon, Bolin was surprised but kept his head on the pillow, his back to the room, and he didn't move or speak even when Mako sat at the foot of the bed. Bolin was still too tired.

            He didn't have to look to see that Mako was hurting. The limp in Mako's step was enough proof of that, and it made Bolin feel very slightly proud that he'd managed to land a few hits in such an unfair match. The fact that he'd put up at least a bit of a fight satisfied the angry voice in his head.

            "I know you don't want me to be here," Mako said, and it took a great deal of effort for Bolin not to snap some sarcastic response, "but I needed to talk to you. Or talk _at_ you, I suppose. You're not going to say anything and I know it. I guess I'll start by telling you that you were right. Last night, you were completely right, and I need to explain."

            Bolin wasn't sure exactly what Mako was talking about, and for a second he thought about raising his head and looking to see if the expression on Mako's face matched the tone in his voice, because otherwise Mako was utterly unreadable. Bolin couldn't feel anything about him no matter how hard he focused, and he wondered if it was because of the conflict in his mind. He kept still. Bolin didn't want to engage with Mako because after everything, he was still angry. After everything, Mako had still embarrassed him and made him hate himself and had made parts of his brain work against each other in ways they had never done before.

            "There was a girl," Mako said with an enormous sigh. "And there were other people, too. I said something about them but I didn't explain myself, so I want to lay everything out for you as clearly as I can. I don't expect you to forgive me but maybe you'll understand."

            Bolin clenched his jaw and folded his hands a little tighter under his pillow.

            "I woke up at the Boiling Rock and I was pretty much deaf and completely blind for like, a day. Maybe two. Maybe more. I don't know. It was terrifying. The man in charge of the whole operation, a guy named Guan, was there and he spoke to me. He asked me if I owed allegiance to anyone and threatened to kill me if I didn't pledge my loyalty to his Society. I didn't have a choice, Bo. If I ever wanted to see any of you again, I had to cooperate. So, I did. And this girl processed me and healed me. She spent a few days bringing my hearing and my sight back, and she fixed the burns and the scrapes and whatever other injuries I had. Her name was Toru. And you were exactly right, she did end up in my bed."

            To say that Bolin was surprised by this would have been a gross understatement, but he kept quiet and kept his expression as impassive as he could. Whether Mako looked to see, he didn't know.

            "She helped me from the very start. She's how I found out you..." Mako's voice grew thick and he trailed off lamely. Then he drew an enormous breath, rubbed nervously at his legs, and continued again. "She's how I found out that you were going to be attacked. But before I could do anything about it I was deemed healthy enough to be transferred, and then I was gone. They shipped me off to Fire Fountain City. See, I don't know if you get it, but that was the primary housing facility for firebenders in the Society. It was where we were trained and sorted into quads and where leaders were determined and missions were given and all of that. To make a long story stupidly short, I did everything I was supposed to do, or everything they expected me to, anyway, and because of my good behavior they promoted me. It was the day after I was named Captain of my quad that I found out you were dead."

            Mako went quiet for a time that grew uncomfortable very quickly, and Bolin couldn't help but look at him. Mako didn't notice; he was too busy rubbing at his eyes, and it made Bolin feel profoundly guilty. The fact that he felt guilty made Bolin feel angry, and the conflict woke the voices. He should be angry, said one side, because if Mako had tried harder Bolin would still have his brain. The other side said to embrace the softer feelings and give in to the pity he wanted to feel. Bolin didn't know what to do, so he did nothing.

            "See, Toru showed up and told me that I was going to be assigned a mission in Republic City, and she told me that as a measure of preparation, you'd been killed. She told me that you were attacked by a combustion bender and you were crushed by a building, and I didn't have any access to the outside so what was I supposed to do? She'd done nothing but help me and take care of me, so why wouldn't I have believed her?" Mako dropped his face into his hands. "I thought you were dead. I believed you were dead and I... I don't know what you want me to say, Bo. I cried like a little girl. I cried for days. But what else could I have done? I couldn't just hop a boat and come home. I'd have been killed. If anyone had had any idea that I was harboring treasonous thoughts I would've been killed on the spot. And I had no reason to disbelieve Toru at that point. She... She was good to me. She stayed with me and comforted me when I was so depressed I didn't even want to wake up in the morning. She pushed me to keep going. She pushed me to maintain the appearance of my loyalty. And as embarrassing as it is for me to say it, she... I don't know. I'm not good at relationships, you know that. But she and I had one, and for a while I thought it was good. It was everything I could've wanted. She didn't think I was weird or awkward and she didn't make fun of me when I had no idea what to do when there was a hot girl in my bed, as you put it. She was understanding and kind and absolutely gorgeous, and she was willing to... You know... With me... You could've told me what I was missing out on."

            Bolin didn't miss the attempt at levity, but he didn't acknowledge it, either. He wasn't sure he'd be able to even if he wanted. He was too stunned. He was mildly impressed.

            "She wasn't the only one, though. I had a roommate, Bingwei, who was an absolute jerk to me in the beginning but he made me a better soldier... A better leader. I don't know. He made me better. He showed me the ropes. And there were my three quadmates. There was a kid named Yaozhu..."

            Mako shifted on the bed and Bolin watched. He put his back against the wall and hugged his knees and dropped his head down, but in the brief moments that Bolin could see his face, he understood that there was nothing fake about Mako's speech. There was nothing fake about his emotion. His cheeks were wet and his eyes were red and no matter how good Mako had gotten over the years at keeping his voice steady, Bolin knew better.

            "Yaozhu was my second in command, right? He was a good kid, fifteen or sixteen, I can't remember. He was a kid. And he was a combustion bender, and he was so happy and friendly and loyal that I still have trouble believing it. He reminded me a lot of you. It made me a little sick how much he reminded me of you. Then there were two other guys, Jing and Fa, and both of them had their own reasons for working with the Society. They were colder but cooperative, and I thought that if I had their back they would have mine, and when the four of us worked together we were one of the strongest quads in our division. We were friends. We had fun together. We ate together. We celebrated together. We were a team.

            "Well, we were assigned a mission in Republic City which required me to convince the Triads to work as recon, just like Toru said we'd be. We went, did the mission, and then we were separated. I took Yaozhu and we went and talked to Beifong. I told her everything I'd figured out about the Society and its inner workings and the attacks that were planned on the city, but I was still operating under the assumption that you were dead. I never thought to ask her to verify it for sure, but when I asked her where you were, she said that Su brought you to Zaofu. I thought she brought you here to... To bury you... Because where would we go in Republic City? I don't know where Mom and Dad are. I don't even know if they were buried. We're not close enough to Tenzin to be buried anywhere on Air Nation soil, and we're not rich enough to afford a plot somewhere in the city. It made sense for Su to take you. You're practically family."

            Mako paused and Bolin heard him sniffling, watched him rub at his eyes and his nose with the back of his arm. When Mako put his head back down, he turned his face away so that when he spoke, Bolin had to strain to listen.

            "We went back to Fire Fountain City. I was supposed to see Toru, because I arranged with Guan for her to be my payment for completing the task he assigned me. It's so complicated. I can't even explain it all. But she was supposed to be waiting in my room and she was supposed to be my dedicated companion and I was looking forward to having her there for me when I needed her. But she wasn't there. Nobody was there. Only Yaozhu. And then I was called into a meeting and they confronted me. Guan confronted me. He told me that he'd had informants who told him that I'd flipped in Republic City and given Lin a bunch of information. Turns out that Yaozhu spilled to Jing and Fa, and they spilled to Guan. There was another informant besides them, but I don't know for sure who it was. I think it was Toru. I told her everything I was going to do before I left, but at the same time I don't want to believe that she'd betray me like that. Not after everything we..."

            Mako sighed again, he sighed twice and he shook his head and Bolin could hear the tears welling up in his voice again. Somehow, Mako pushed them back down.

            "Well, they flopped. I was done. They attacked me and while I was defending myself I shot Jing and Fa full of lightning and killed them on the spot. I probably took out more than them, but they're the only ones I know for sure. But I lost. There were too many for me to fight against. I thought for sure I wasn't going to make it, and I'm pretty sure that I was gone for a while. Guan told me that I was dead. He told me that Toru brought me back and that she never loved me and had only healed me so that he could break me down again. He wanted to torture me for his own enjoyment, because I was a threat to him. Whatever. Point is, he hurt me and healed me and hurt me some more and he kept me locked in that room where you guys found me. And the worst thing... Bo... I thought you were gone, and I let Yaozhu take your place and I cared about him and even though I thought he was almost as obnoxious as you were, I cared. I guess I've got a soft spot for naive idiots. Guan killed him. Guan killed Yaozhu right in front of me, and it wasn't quick. It wasn't like Mom and Dad were, Bo. He had him chained up. And he wrapped the chains around Yaozhu's neck and strangled him and pushed him against the bars. I watched him die, Bo. He kept staring at me the whole time, kept trying to apologize because he told Jing and Fa what we'd done in Republic City because he thought that they were our friends. And then he died. Guan killed him right in front of me. His throat collapsed under the chains and he kept twitching even after he was dead. And then Guan just left him there. He let Yaozhu fall down and then he left, and Yaozhu stayed."

            Mako went silent except for his sniffling and for a while Bolin wanted to sit up and comfort him. As angry as he was at Mako, Mako was still his brother and it seemed remarkably cold-hearted to let him suffer in silence. But above all, Bolin wanted distance. He couldn't leave if he couldn't maintain the distance.

            "I watched him die, Bo, and then I watched his body decompose. I smelled it and I heard it and it was horrible. I watched him turn into a pile of flesh and fluid and then you guys came and you flew down the hall and you skidded right into him. That body you landed on, Bolin, that was Yaozhu."

            Again, the silence came but this time there were no sounds of crying. All Bolin could hear was Mako breathing deep and controlled breaths, and the quiet lasted too long.

            "So, there it is," Mako said at last. The quivering that had grown in his voice through his story had fallen conspicuously absent. "There's my excuse. That's why I wasn't here for you when you needed me. I know you feel like I abandoned you, but I thought you were dead and I had people that I cared about and, yeah, I had a hot chick in my bed and she was good. In the end, it didn't matter. I lost all of them, and I'd say it was worth losing them and going through all that horrible stuff to have you back, but I don't even know that I have you back. Yeah, you're alive but..." Mako shook his head. "You're not happy and I don't know what to do to make you happy, and now you won't talk to anyone, so..."

            One more enormous sigh and Mako stood, rubbed his eyes, and toed at the ground nervously.

            "I love you, Bo, and I meant it when I said that I don't expect you to forgive me for leaving Republic City when I should have stayed. I just hope you understand that at the time I didn't know what I know now. I was depressed and lonely and afraid and I found comfort in the only places I could. I regret it all now. I hope you understand."

            When Mako exited the room, he left a silence so heavy that it hurt, and while Bolin felt his eyes growing warm and wet at the thought of what Mako had gone through, he felt the anxiety welling inside of him when he considered the body he'd landed on and the fluids that had covered him. The anxiety was stronger than the guilt, and the longer Bolin's mind lingered on the truth of it all, the more panicked he felt and the more the idea of leaving solidified in the back of his mind. He should've felt empathy. He should've moved to help. He should've comforted Mako regardless of his own feelings on the matter, because in the end of all things his brother was more important than any conflict that could rise between them.

            It should've been like that, anyway.

            When it came down to it, Bolin couldn't forgive Mako. He couldn't stop hating him because Mako had given up and stayed away, and even if he'd thought that Bolin had been dead he should've come back for Korra and Asami's sakes. The people in Republic City were more important than anyone he could've met while he was away.

            Bolin had to hate Mako, or Bolin wouldn't be able to leave.

            Su visited late the same day, and the news she brought explained Mako's visit, too. She knocked and entered despite Bolin's continued silence, but she didn't sit on the bed and stayed a respectable distance away. It was the first interaction Bolin could remember where Su didn't try to touch him right off the bat.

            "How are you feeling?" Su said as though she didn't expect an answer, and indeed she didn't pause. "I know Mako was in here, he told me he'd come to talk to you and that you didn't say anything to him. I don't want to overwhelm you with so much stuff right now, but it can't really be helped. I figure you'd rather be in the loop, even if it made you uncomfortable."

            Su paused now, and Bolin curled a bit tighter on the bed. He didn't look at her because he was too embarrassed.

            "You scared me last night," she said a bit too conversationally. "I really hope you're feeling better, or at least maybe a little more stable. I hope whatever you were hearing is gone."

            Bolin's embarrassment deepened and he felt his face growing warm.

            "It doesn't matter, I suppose, so I'll stop wasting your time and get right down to it. First, I wanted to apologize to you. I've made a lot of mistakes the last few days. I'm sorry I dragged you out of your room last night and I'm sorry if you feel like I was patronizing you when I offered to have your dinner brought here. That wasn't my intent. I should've known better than to make you do anything, especially after..." She paused and sighed. "Well, I need to apologize for that, too. I'm sorry I yelled at you. Mako explained to me what happened on Baihe Island, how you had to protect everyone and how badly it affected you, and I got scared. I guess the _mom_ part of me kicked in and I needed to help my baby. I shouldn't have yelled and I should never have gotten angry. I should've realized that you were hurting and I should have done a better job of trying to listen to you and trying to help. And that brings me to the important part. You came to see me the day after you got home, before any of this mess started and any of this fighting happened. You came to me because you were seeking help and I didn't listen to you. You told me that you didn't want to be here and that you didn't feel comfortable here and I didn't listen. I'm so, so sorry, Bolin. I should have listened."

            He wanted to rub it in her face that he'd been right the whole time, but the pitiful tone in her voice made that all but impossible. Besides, if he talked to her now it meant he'd have to talk to everyone else, and that wasn't a concession he was willing to make. He had to keep himself steeled and angry. He had to give in to the negativity and the hatefulness.

            "I'm here to give you information and offer you a deal, I guess. Mako has to go back to Republic City. I got the call a few hours ago. Lin wants him to attend a meeting with the President and the Firelord and a bunch of other people to explain what he knows about the Society of Firebenders so that a strategy can be developed to deal with them. The meeting is in four days, so he'll be leaving in three. He wants to have time to get settled back in to your apartment and make sure he's prepared before the meeting."

            So that's why Mako came to visit, Bolin thought. He had to get everything off his chest before he left, before it was too late and things got too busy. It must have been Mako's last ditch effort to make things right and make himself feel better. Bolin wondered if Mako would come see him again before he left or if he'd simply leave.

            "Here's the deal, Bolin," Su continued without pause, "you told me that you didn't want to stay in Zaofu. I'm not going to force you to. If you want to go back to Republic City, I'll let you go. If you want to go home with Mako and try to get yourself back together, that's fine. It's what you wanted, you just have to let us know."

            Bolin was fairly blindsided by the sudden offer. It wasn't what he expected her to say, but then again, Bolin hadn't really known what to expect. Going to Republic City wasn't what he'd wanted at all. 

            "I should let you know that Korra and Asami will be going back to Republic City, too. Korra is supposed to be at the meeting as par for the course as the Avatar, and Asami said that beyond being a little bit homesick, she's got business to take care of with Future Industries. Opal will be staying here in Zaofu regardless of whether you go to the city. I spoke with her already and she wants you to do what you feel is best, regardless of her opinion."

            Su sighed and folded her arms over her chest, and Bolin could feel her eyes boring into his back. He didn't move.

            “You already know how I feel, that I want you to stay here and heal up, but I'm not too proud to admit that it's more for my benefit than for yours. I want you to stay here so that I can rest easier, but that's not fair to you. You're an adult. You can make your own decisions and I'll support you no matter what you do. And I'll try not to yell at you again even if I get upset, but if I do, please forgive me. I'm just a worried old lady who wants her babies to be okay."

            Bolin wanted to snap at her that he wasn't her baby and that he never would be, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. He didn't want to rub Su's face in her mistakes the same way everyone else had rubbed his face in his own. Maybe he was justified in doing so, but he knew it wouldn't help. For once he'd take the high road. It was easier that way.

            "Think about it," Su said in conclusion. She turned and walked to the door. "The choice is yours. If you show up when we leave, I'll know you're leaving. If you don't, I'll know you're staying. I'll come see you before then, but I'm done bothering you for now."

            She left, and again Bolin was alone.

            This time was different than when Mako left. When Mako left, Bolin had felt sad and guilty and the resolve he'd been building had begun to waver. Su had given him an opportunity. Su had given him everything that he needed to set his plan into action. She'd given him a timeline and she'd given him an excuse and she'd given him a reason to follow through. She’d given him the confidence that everyone would be so distracted by leaving for Republic City that no one would notice if he quietly slipped out. 

            Except for Korra. She would notice and she would follow. He’d have to come up with some way to keep her from tailing him, and he was beginning to gain a vague idea of what it would be.

            Now he just needed to do it.

 

*****

 

            When news came down the pipeline that she would have to leave Zaofu, Korra was conflicted. The moment Suyin made the announcement to Korra, Mako, Asami, and Opal over their dinners, a flood of relief washed through Korra that was so heavy she thought she'd cry. She'd missed Republic City, even if she hadn't thought about it. She missed the long, calming talks she shared with Tenzin and the fun she had with the airbender kids. She missed the constant hustle of the city and always having a job to do. There was too much sitting around in Zaofu. There was too much waiting, and it allowed her mind to wander into places that she didn't want her mind to go.

            At the same time, when Su mentioned that whether Bolin would go with them was up in the air, Korra was sad. Team Avatar hadn't been whole in months, whether because of Mako's absence or Bolin's injury or the constant infighting amongst them all. The notion of facing off against the Democratic Society of Firebenders one very important member short gutted her. The four of them together could tackle anything. They had all their bases covered. But short any member they lost their strength and things looked more uncertain.

            Beyond the status of Team Avatar, Korra wondered about her personal relationships and how a change of scenery would affect them. In a way, Bolin's absence could prove beneficial. Without him to distract her, Korra might be able to sort out her feelings and level out a bit. If she worked very, very hard, she might be able to make up for all her missteps and mend her relationship with Asami, and though she knew it wouldn't be exactly as it had once been, there could be a start.

            More, without Bolin in the picture, she could distance herself from him. She'd known for a long time that she'd grown too close to him, and that the closeness had been just as bad for them both as it had been good. She'd served as his sole support for most of the collapse's aftermath, and she'd been the only person to whom he'd ever attempted to explain himself or vent his frustration. He'd given her a project, as horrible as it sounded. As the Avatar, it was Korra's job to help people whenever they needed it, and as far as the terrorism in the wider world was concerned, she'd been unable to do anything. At least Bolin made her feel useful.

            He'd made her feel other things, too, and that was where the problems began. Korra had known for years and years that he'd had feelings for her and that he'd managed to overcome them, but things had happened since the collapse that let Korra know he hadn't eliminated them by a long shot. Even if he'd pushed his own feelings down somewhere out of sight, whenever Bolin's defenses lowered and his focus wavered they came back out, and they weren't still the innocent feelings of a teenage crush. As modest as Bolin had always tried to be with her and Asami, that modesty went right out the door when he and Korra were alone, and Korra's own inexperience had made his advances particularly potent.

            In the end, she decided that it was for the best that she leave and he stay, and even if Bolin returned to Republic City with them, Korra decided that she would try to keep her distance. If she worked to eliminate the amount of time they spent together in situations that could escalate, it might allow her to eliminate the weird, juvenile attraction that had come over her.

            Korra thought about the problems. She thought about how her problems would cause more problems, how if Bolin came back to Republic City to heal and she outright ignored him, it could make him worse all over again. From his perspective, she'd be abandoning him, and Korra already knew how he reacted when he felt like he was being abandoned.

            It took a long time for Korra to muster the nerve to go speak to Bolin about all that was going through her head. She managed to make her way to his room late the same day. She'd not seen him since he and Mako had fought in the courtyard, and that night had been frightening enough that she'd wanted to stay away. Still, it wouldn't be fair. She had to explain herself. It was time to get everything off her chest if only to make herself feel better and air it all out. If she laid her cards on the table, she couldn't feel guilty for doing what she thought was necessary to fix the problems.

            There was something strange in Bolin that Korra felt immediately upon entering the room. He wasn't lying down as she imagined he'd be doing: Instead, he was sitting atop the covers with Pabu draped comfortably around his shoulders, a book on his lap, and he seemed to be so deep in concentration that he didn't look up when Korra came in. It looked as though he was writing, but his hand was moving so slow that Korra wondered how he was getting anything done.

            Korra cleared her throat, but Bolin still didn't look up. A swarm of butterflies hatched in her stomach.

            "Bolin?"

            He held up a finger, his eyes still on the page, and then went back to his writing. Korra folded her hands and stood there dumbly, uncertain of exactly what to do. But then Bolin closed the book and set it aside, and he leveled a puzzled look on Korra that contained subtle hints of concern.

            "Can I sit down?"

            He didn't say anything, but he folded his legs. Korra considered that a yes, and when she found her place at the foot of the bed it was significantly farther away than she ordinarily would have sat. She had to remember that she was here to lay things out and remain as level-headed as she could. That meant keeping some distance, at least physically, so that no matter what he did she wouldn't feel in any way uncomfortable.

            "We're leaving the day after tomorrow," Korra said once she'd settled in. "I guess you probably already knew that. Su mentioned that you might be coming with us, but she said you hadn't told her one way or the other. Did... Did you make a decision?"

            Bolin pulled Pabu off his shoulder and folded him gently in his lap, then he reclined against the wall. Without ever looking up, he said, "I'm not going."

            A sudden, enormous lump jumped into Korra's throat. She'd held out hope that he might stay in Zaofu but had never truly believed that he would. That he'd decided against returning home with them all was enormously relieving. She'd get her distance. She'd get her time to think. She could present everything as she wanted to and leave it to sit and sort out on its own.

            It was perfect, somehow it was liberating, and whatever nervousness Korra had harbored when she'd initially thought about this conversation disappeared almost entirely so that all that remained was the tiniest quivering in her stomach.

            Korra nodded and watched for a few seconds while Pabu nibbled affectionately at Bolin's wrist while Bolin picked at the hairs on Pabu's stomach. It seemed as though Bolin wasn't paying her much attention at all. It was strange. He'd done nothing but pay attention to her for weeks.

            "I don't know when we're going to see each other again," Korra continued, a bit tentatively, "and I feel like I need to say something before I go. It might sound self-centered, but I wanted to make sure that you don't think badly of me. I don't want you to think I was avoiding you. And more than that, I owe it to you to be honest. One of your biggest complaints has been that people don't listen to you and people lie to you, and I don't want to do either of those things. I didn't come in here for a conversation, is what I'm trying to say. I came in here so that I can be completely honest with you before I leave. It's selfish, but I won't feel right unless I come clean."

            The eyebrow was up again in the skeptical look that Bolin had mastered so thoroughly. It was a look like what Mako would give. It was strange to see it on Bolin.

            Korra drew an enormous breath, folded her hands in her lap, and set her eyes on her feet. She worried that if she looked at Bolin or saw his reaction from the corner of her eye that she'd lose heart and fail.

            "I don't need to recap. You know everything that's happened between us, and even if you didn't, I suppose it wouldn't matter because everything I want to tell you is on my end, anyway. I feel pretty safe in assuming you know that I've been having some... Feelings… About you for a while now. But it's not as straightforward as you might think it is. I don't _like_ you the way you think I do. I don't want a romantic relationship with you in any way at all because as much as you'll hate me for saying it, you need to be with Opal. She's good for you and you're good for her and if you two aren't the most perfect couple in the world then I'm a purple-footed platypus bear."

            The eyebrow hadn't gone down yet. Bolin watched her with rapt attention, and the only indication that anything was working in his brain at all was that he'd stopped poking about Pabu's belly.

            "What I'm trying to say is that yes, I've got something like a crush on you, but it's not really... Real... I love you. I love you a lot, and I hope you know that, but I love you as a friend. Like family."

            If it was possible, Bolin's skepticism deepened and Korra felt herself growing warm with embarrassment. She kept her eyes low and worked hard not to fidget.

            "Okay, so that was a bad way to phrase that. Whatever. You know how much you mean to me. You know how much you mean to all of us. But I've got something in my head that goes beyond that, and I've been trying for a long time to figure out exactly what it is and how it got there and what I should do about it, and I think I figured it out. When you kissed me, you made me aware of the fact that _you're a boy_ for the first time."

            It looked to Korra as though Bolin was working to contain some rebuttal, like she’d offended him very slightly.

            "The fact is, I want to help you and even if you were a stump I'd still want to help you. I want to see you get better because you're important to me. But lately I haven't been able to ignore you beyond that. I guess what I'm trying to say is that lately I've been sort of infatuated with you and I'm sorry about that. I do what I can to avoid it but it's still there and I'm not sure what to do about it."

            Korra sighed. She allowed herself another few seconds of fidgeting before she folded her hands on her knees and looked at Bolin with the sincerest expression she could muster.

            "I know that what I just told you is messed up and that's why I've had such a hard time saying anything about it. But I want you to know that I can handle myself, and I know that you can handle yourself, and even if none of the physical stuff had happened between the two of us, I'd still want to help you. You can think whatever you want about me, that I'm shallow and horrible and everything. I just wanted to make sure you knew before I left that if it seems like I'm trying to keep my distance, I am. I need to get over you so that I can get back with Asami and so that you can get back with Opal. That's the way it's supposed to be."

            Bolin didn't say anything. Korra wasn't sure why she expected him to. If anyone had come to her with the same admission that she'd just made to him, she'd be dumbfounded and scandalized. Korra supposed it was a miracle that he didn't look upset. If anything, he looked very interested, like he was thinking hard or like he'd been given information that somehow changed things.

            Still, even if he didn't look hateful his silence upset her. His silence made her feel very self-conscious and very, very guilty. Somewhere deep in the back of her mind, Korra had hoped that the old Bolin would kick in and he'd tell her that it was totally okay for her to have such intense feelings about him and that things would work out in the end. He didn't. He just sat there.

            Korra stood up and patted her thighs as though dusting herself off. Then she drew herself up tall, inhaled deeply, and set herself to confidence.

            "If I don't see you again before we leave, I hope you get well. I know you haven't really been talking to anyone, but if you decide you have something you want to get off your chest you know you're always welcome. And if you decide you don't want to talk, that's fine, too, just promise you'll drop me a line sometime. And I promise I'll actually answer it this time."

            With that, Korra nodded to herself, shot one last hopeful glance Bolin's way, and when he didn't respond, she left.

            Korra cried all the way back to her room, and she didn't know why. She'd hoped that admitting her feelings, as horrible as they were, would remove an enormous weight from her shoulders, but it didn't. It simply changed it. Now her nervousness wasn't drawn from feelings she'd held as secret, but came because of her uncertainty about how Bolin might react now that he knew. She was afraid of how her admission might impact their relationship, because if Korra was in Bolin's shoes and Bolin had said, in effect, that he was only interested in her body, Korra would be disgusted. Korra would probably hate him.

            She'd put herself out on a limb, and that wasn't something Korra had ever felt comfortable doing. What was worse was that for so long Korra had felt that Bolin was the last person who was truly on her side, and even then, he wasn't always there. Sometimes he was so angry at her that he yelled. But he'd still seemed generally supportive of her and he'd listened to her when she needed an ear in the same way she'd listened to him.

            Now Korra had no one.

            She'd hoped to get to her room without incident, but just before she opened her bedroom door, Asami met her in the hallway and there was nothing Korra could do to hide the fact that she'd been crying. Even if she turned her face away, Asami would have known. Asami would have understood by Korra's passive body language that something was wrong.

            Asami didn't say anything when she hooked her arm around Korra's shoulders and redirected her, and before Korra could protest she was sitting on Asami's bed with her head in her hands crying like a baby and wishing she'd been faster at getting into her own room.

            It took a while for Asami to ask Korra what was wrong. It took longer for Korra to respond. The kindness in Asami's voice hurt Korra more than Bolin's silence had, because there had been a point not long ago when Asami aimed that kindness at her all the time, and it had been painful to go without it.

            Korra felt lame when the only thing she could say was, "I feel really lonely."

            "What do you mean?" Asami asked. She rubbed at Korra's back. "Why do you feel lonely?"

            Korra shook her head. "Everything is wrong," she sniffled. "Everyone is all messed up. I don't know when it all went so wrong, but I miss the way it used to be. It feels like everyone hates each other, and if we don't hate each other then we're so scared of each other that we stay away. We all used to be so close, and now it's impossible to even talk to you guys."

            "Why?" Asami asked. "Why is it impossible to talk to us?"

            "Because I'm stuck in the middle of everything! I've had Bolin pulling on me on one side and laying all his problems on me, and then you and Opal are on the other side, and then Su is off somewhere else and Mako just dropped in on us. I've been trying so, so hard to hold everyone together but it doesn't work. It hasn't worked."

            "How long have you been feeling this way?"

            "Forever!"

            Korra recognized how stupid she'd sounded the minute the word had come out of her.

            "I don't know, Asami," Korra sniffled. Her initial burst of emotion had begun to fade, and she managed to wipe the tears from her eyes and steady her voice somewhat. "I just feel really... Spread out. I've been giving so much of myself to so many different people. I'm exhausted. And I feel alone because if I support Bolin then you and Opal are against me, and if I support you guys then Bolin is against me, and every time I make a mistake everyone else turns against me for not doing the right thing. Yeah, I'm the Avatar, but I'm a person, too, and I don't know how to fix all the problems. I can't fix all the problems alone, and I've been so focused on everyone else that I haven't been able to fix myself."

            "What do you mean? What's wrong with you that you have to fix?"

            Korra dared not answer the question, and not only because the truth was so humiliating. Asami and Opal already suspected that something more than innocent had happened between Korra and Bolin, or they had believed it at one point, anyway, so admitting to Asami what she'd just admitted to Bolin seemed an enormous and obvious misstep. She sighed to ground herself, to level herself out, and dropped her hands to her knees.

            "I'm just stressed out," Korra said lamely. "I mean that there's so much going on in the world that I'm going to have to fix and I haven't been able to focus on myself and making sure that I'm ready. We're going to go back to Republic City and I'm going to have to be the Avatar, and I don't know that I'm ready for it."

            "Of course, you're ready for it," Asami said kindly. "You've always been ready, and you've always done a fine job. Sometimes it's hard, but you know that no matter what happens between all of us, we're here to support you. I hope you know that."

            Korra nodded.

            "Listen, Korra. I'm as guilty as you say I am when it comes to pulling you in different directions, and I'm sorry for that. I jumped to a lot of unfair conclusions at the start of all of this, and not just about you. I did the same thing to Bolin. I made assumptions that were wrong because I was afraid and because I didn't know what to do, either. I was so afraid of things falling apart that I think I might've made them even worse. I'm sorry I treated you so unfairly. I want you to know that I'm going to try harder to be better. I'm going to try to be more objective and more understanding of the fact that everyone is having a hard time with all of this. I'm sorry if what I've done or said lately hurt you. I love you."

            When Asami wrapped her arms around Korra, Korra couldn't help but cry all over again. She hadn't come into this room expecting Asami to say anything that might make things better, but Asami had done it. Asami had said exactly what she needed to wake a tiny hopeful light in Korra's heart that allowed her to believe that maybe things would get back to normal.

            The two of them sat there until the tiny hours the same way they might've done in the months before Mako's capture, and for a while, Korra felt happy and whole again. And though Asami didn't offer her anything more than a long, tight hug when Korra left, she went to sleep that night hoping that perhaps their relationship could be mended after all.

            The next day, Korra felt surprisingly better. She hadn't slept for long but what she'd gotten had been deep and restorative, and though she'd imagined that maybe her and Asami's conversation had been some kind of strange dream, the fact that Asami met her for breakfast and spent most of the morning helping Korra pack assured her that it had been all too real.

            It wasn't until that afternoon that Korra realized what she was returning to in Republic City, that the place was in shambles and she and Mako would be expected to help President Raiko and Firelord Izumi create a plan that might help bring down the Society of Firebenders. Korra had been too caught up in her own personal drama to think about it, and that struck her as somehow alarming.

            She found Mako in Su's office where it seemed he was buried in a mountain of papers and books, and though he greeted her warmly enough, he didn't stop working when she sat down. It reminded her of Bolin scribbling in his own book yesterday.

            "Where's Su?" Korra asked, the best introduction she could think of.

            Mako shrugged. "Said she was going out for a while."

            "I assume you're working on your statement."

            Mako nodded.

            "I assume you know that we're going to have to think of a solution, right?"

            He nodded again.

            "Can I ask if you've thought of anything? Or if you've got anything to go off?"

            Mako's mouth twisted up weirdly and his head cocked to the side, and after a second he punctuated his sentence, dropped his pen, and flopped back on the couch. "Boy, do I," he said, a little exasperated. "And I don't even know where to start."

            Mako seemed more willing to speak than Korra had anticipated he might be, because he rifled through his papers, produced a quarter page from Zaofu's local news, and tossed it across the table to Korra. She picked it up and began to read, but Mako continued speaking all the way through.

            "So, that was published a couple days ago. Seems that His Excellency wasn't in the city when you attacked and he's none too happy about what we did. There's a lot of information there, though." Mako swallowed hard and began rifling through the papers again, and as he produced another clipping he sighed. "Verifies the number of dead, that letter does, and injured and everything. Sounds like Bolin might've made things worse for us than we thought."

            The publication indeed verified the numbers. Sixty-one people dead and thirty injured. It made Korra's stomach turn all over again because Korra and Asami's estimate had been so low. Worse, the letter threatened retaliation and suggested that attacks against Earth Nation towns and cities would escalate.

            "Then there's this."

            Mako threw the second clipping at her, and Korra gaped dumbly at it. She read the headline three times before the words sank in: _Fire Nation Falls!_

            Korra looked at Mako and flapped her mouth for a few moments before she managed to stammer, "What does this mean?"

            "Okay, so you have to understand that the Society is way bigger than anyone thought it was, right? Fire Fountain City was one of many housing units for its soldiers. I don't know how many there were, at least three and a few quarantines besides, and if any of the others were as big as Fire Fountain City, the numbers could easily be in the thousands."

            Korra couldn't believe it. How many firebenders were there in the world, and how angry were they that they would band together to attack innocent people and lay siege to the heart of the Fire Nation?

            "You know the Firelord left for Republic City. We're supposed to have that meeting the day after tomorrow, so of course she left early. And she took a bunch of her personal guard with her. It's a good thing. She'd have been assassinated for sure if she'd been in the palace when they took it."

            Korra looked between Mako and the newspaper a few times in disbelief. "How?"

            "Numbers. Sheer numbers. And you know, Firelord Izumi is so passive that she doesn't keep a sizeable army."

            So, they'd taken the Capital. The Democratic Society of Firebenders had taken a foothold in one of the most powerful regions in the world, and it seemed, if the newspaper reporting was to be believed, that they'd done it relatively easily.

            "Civilians don't care," Mako explained with a concerned excitement, "as long as they're safe and they don't get mixed up in anything bad, civilians won't fight back. They'll hide in their homes and protect their families and their belongings and let the army fight. I mean, regular life won't change for anyone, no matter who is in charge. Yeah, they might have to fly a different flag outside their houses and their stores, but realistically, it doesn't matter to them. And if the firebenders in the Fire Nation are anything like what I've read about the firebenders in Republic City, they might actually _welcome_ a change in government."

            "What's going on with the firebenders in Republic City?"

            Mako shook his head. "They're angry. Raiko knee-jerked with this registry thing and it had an enormous backlash. See, the thing is this: A lot of firebenders were pretty neutral on the whole thing the same way as the civilians in the Fire Nation, right? They didn't really care because they weren't being impacted, so they were somewhere in the middle as far as how they felt about everything. But then Raiko started vilifying them. What Raiko did encouraged people to take action against innocent firebenders, and that made those people sympathize with the Society because the Society is standing up for the rights of firebenders everywhere. It's attractive for them to join so that they can avoid persecution from everyone else."

            Mako's logic struck Korra as both brilliant and ridiculous. She wondered when he'd gotten so politically minded, if it was a result of his experience as a detective or if it had come from working for Wu and attending all the weird events that were required. Or maybe he just had a mind for it but had never had the opportunity to demonstrate it.

            "It's a long, long game," Mako continued, apparently unaware of Korra's surprise. "And it banks on making ordinary people so afraid of bad things happening to them that they end up willing to work with the bad guys because it's their only real choice. That's how they get the numbers in the end. I didn't believe it at first, but most of the members of the Society are _volunteers_. They're there of their own will, not because they were kidnapped like I was. In fact, I'd argue that very few people are there against their will, and even if they were there against their will, the Society has a lot of methods they can use to convince people that the cause is good. They used those methods on me, and they worked. I had no plans of staying with them, but they manipulated me and I stayed anyway."

            "You've given this a lot of thought," Korra said dumbly, unsure of what else to say.

            "Of course, I have," Mako replied, a little indignant. "They had me locked up, and now I've got to go to Raiko and Lin and the Firelord who just got kicked out of her own house, and I've got to give them an idea of what to do before their idiot ideas make things even worse."

            "What’s your idea, then? What are we going to do?"

            Mako sighed, resigned, and he collected the papers he'd handed to Korra and tucked them back into his pile. Then he assumed a tired posture and shook his head and shrugged.

            "I hate to say it, but it looks like the good guys are going to have to take a page out of the bad guy book," Mako explained quietly. "They're going to have to play the long game. Raiko is going to have to let up on the firebenders in the Republic so that he doesn't end up radicalizing them. And we're going to have to institute some kind of anti-terrorism plan to make the public understand that what the Society is doing doesn't reflect the attitude of every firebender out there. In other words, we've got to make people think of firebenders as innocent instead of demonizing them."

            "Okay, and what does that do?"

            "It slows recruitment. It stops people from switching sides and will keep the Society from growing any more than it already has."

            "And how do we get rid of what exists now?"

            Mako shrugged and shook his head again. "I don't know. I'd say we go after Guan, but I don't know where he's at or how to find him. He's got the whole world to hide. We could try to expose him for what he is--he had his bending taken away by Amon way back when, right?--and maybe that'll turn people against him. But it could backfire, too. If people find out he had his bending taken away they might just say it was an attack against firebenders and double down."

            "So, there's nothing we can do."

            "No," Mako said. "It's not that there's nothing. It's just that this is a war of philosophy. It's a war of ideas instead of a war over territory or resources. It's all in the people's ideology, and while it definitely has real-world consequences, there's no way we're going to fix it unless we change the way people think." Mako paused and sighed very deeply. "And you know how hard it is to change the way people think."

            The two of them fell quiet for a few moments, and during the silence Korra watched Mako's changing expressions. He shuffled through his papers and flipped through his notes, and while sometimes he looked very intent on his reading there were also times when his face dropped and he looked very, very tired. Korra wouldn't go so far as to call it a depressed look, but it was certainly unhappy.

            "Mako?" Korra asked, and when he looked at her she cowed a bit. There was an intensity in his face that she hadn't expected. "There's no way this isn't going to sound stupid, but are you okay?"

            Mako's head tilted to the side, and his brow furrowed. "Yeah," he said at last, and there was nothing disingenuous about his tone, "it's just a lot of paperwork. This whole thing is overwhelming. I didn't expect to come home and have to meet so soon with such important people."

            "That's not what I meant," Korra said gently. "I know you can handle the police work."

            "Then what are you talking about?"

            Korra wasn't sure how to say it. "I mean, are you okay personally? You went through a lot. I can't begin to imagine what happened while you were away, and then you come home and everything is a mess. And Bolin... I didn't think I'd ever see you two argue with each other, let alone throwing punches."

            "Oh, we've been in a scrap or two," Mako said genially enough. "And as far as I go? Don't worry about it. I've got to take one step at a time, and right now that means setting everything that happened to me aside so that I can do what's needed of me."

            "That's really generous of you."

            Again, Mako shrugged. "It's what I've got to do. Don't get me wrong, Korra, I saw some horrible things. I watched people die. I watched people being kidnapped. And beyond that? I was a piece of meat, basically. For a few weeks I wasn't a person, and then when they figured out I was decent at what I did and in good shape physically, I stopped being a piece of meat and became a number. A lot of stuff happened really quickly, and it's going to take me a while to process it. I don't even want to start until I can give it my full attention."

            Korra nodded. "I need to ask you a question," she said after a moment's silence, "and it's going to be weird, but I can't get it out of my head."

            Mako waited patiently, and Korra felt herself blushing.

            "Did you mean what you said? When you and Bolin were fighting, you yelled at him and said that he was using me to get back at Opal. Do you really believe that?"

            Now Mako looked profoundly troubled. He shook his head and looked at the floor. "Don't read too far into what I said, Korra. I couldn't tell you what Bolin is thinking at all, I couldn't even try. I yelled at him because I was angry, not because I was thinking real hard about it. It was a heat of the moment kind of thing."

            Mako paused, and he must have read the look on Korra's face as her being dissatisfied with his answer. She'd been trying to keep her face neutral, but it must not have worked.

            "Look, Korra, I'd like to think I know my brother after everything we've been through, and if he was the same Bo that he was before I went to Ba Sing Se, I'd say there was no way he'd ever consider exploiting someone to get back at someone else. He's never been a guy to hold a grudge and act on whatever negative feelings he has. He's not vengeful, and he's never been that way. I'd like to think that's the case now, that whatever you two have is genuine, but I can't say for sure. He's different and I don't feel like I know him well enough to say. I'm happy to assume he's the same old Bolin, though, deep down, and that he's treating you so well because he cares, not because he thinks it'll hurt Opal."

            Korra nodded, because what else could she do?

            She stood up and sighed, then she rounded the table and wrapped her arms awkwardly around Mako's shoulders, and just as awkwardly, he patted her on the elbow. It was an exchange typical of their relationship, and it made Korra happy to know that no matter how long they were apart, at least one thing remained constant.

            It wasn't until after Korra left Su's study that she realized she'd not mentioned to Mako that Bolin wouldn't be coming with them to Republic City. She didn't turn around, though because it wasn't a secret that Bolin hadn't been speaking. She didn't want to make Mako feel any worse than he already felt, especially not now she knew how much stress he was really under. He would find out eventually, and Korra imagined it would be better for the news to come from either Su or from Bolin himself.

            Korra spent the remainder of the day relaxing as much as she was able. She spent a little time with Asami, discussing things they might like to do when they returned to Republic City and providing they were able to go out in public. They briefly entertained the idea of taking Mako out somewhere nice for a relaxing evening on the town, but weren't sure if he'd accept it even if they tried. In the end, they decided that they would invite him to a fancy dinner, and if he accepted the offer it was great, but if he didn't, they were going to go anyway.

            Asami and Korra ate dinner with Su, Mako, and Opal as they did most days, and for the first time since they'd come home from Fire Fountain City, the conversation wasn't stilted or uncomfortable. While Opal didn't say much, Su kept the conversation rolling along by asking questions about what they might do once they were home and what ideas Mako had come up with to address the issues of the Firebending Society, and she mentioned how excited Tenzin and Pema were to have everyone back home. At the end of things, Opal chimed in rather unexpectedly to express how nice it was to have friends in Zaofu with her, and that even if things went badly sometimes that she'd appreciated the companionship that Korra and Asami had provided. She made no mention of Bolin, but she did say she hoped to visit Republic City once things calmed down a little bit more.

            Korra retired to bed early that night and spent a very long time lying on her bed and watching the shadows cast on the ceiling. She couldn't sleep. She felt wired. The more she thought about returning to Republic City the more nervous she felt because the few bits of news Mako had given her made it seem that the whole place was in shambles. She worried that they would return home and there would be an attack, or that she'd be accosted by angry firebenders who were sick of being stereotyped and scapegoated. Korra wasn't sure what she'd do about it. Even if she issued a formal Avatar statement, it wouldn't change the minds of the people at large. Anyone who hated firebenders would keep hating firebenders, no matter what Korra said.

            She meditated for a time to try and clear her head, and though the thoughts continued to roll through her mind, she did feel more relaxed. She was, in fact, so relaxed that when she heard a knock on the door she nearly fell over. But she inhaled deeply, reclaimed her calm, and answered.

            She'd not been expecting to see Bolin again, but there he was all the same, and without a word he pushed his way into her room. Dumbfounded, Korra closed the door, and when she turned back around, Bolin was watching her with an expression that was full of interest. It made her a little uncomfortable, but at the same time, she had told him that if he ever wanted to talk he was welcome to show up. She just hadn't expected it.

            Korra offered him a smile that she hoped looked gentle, but it fell away when she leaned against the door and sighed. "You know, on the one hand it's really, really late, but on the other hand I'm happy you decided to come and talk."

            The look on Bolin's face changed. It was a subtle change, but a purposeful change, and it seemed that beneath the shallow puzzlement was a deeper determination.

            "I didn't come here to talk."

            Korra was confused, and she watched Bolin very, very carefully. He wasn't acting as usual. He wasn't acting at all. Where normally he'd have come right in and settled on her bed or broken down right away, he didn't move. He didn't look away from her. He didn't seem upset, but had set his jaw and a tension began to build in his arms and shoulders that made Korra afraid that he was going to explode. She was too afraid to ask him what exactly he'd come for if he hadn't meant to talk.

            When he moved, Korra recoiled, her eyes squinted closed while she waited for him to strike her. But he didn't strike her.

            He kissed her.

            Before Korra knew what had happened, Bolin's hands fell on her neck and her face, and then his mouth was on hers the same way it had been the night of the collapse, and the same way she'd been that night, Korra was too stunned by the sudden advance to pull away. She was too stunned to do anything at all except stand there with her back to the door, feeling his lips parting against hers with a dizzying insistence that made her face go numb and her mind go blank. It stayed blank for a moment in which all she felt was his hands and his face and the warmth radiating from him, until all at once her head flooded with a torrent of strange thoughts and vibrant sensations, with the realization that this was what she had wanted for weeks and weeks, even if that want had been small and buried in the back of her mind. And this time she knew that Bolin wanted it, too, because even if his brain was different than it had been before, his brain was _on_ and he was aware, and the urgency with which he'd engaged her gave every indication that he'd been thinking of doing this for a long, long time.

            Korra didn't know when she'd started kissing him back.

            Bolin's hands stayed on her when he finally drew away, and his face remained so close to hers that all it would take to engage him again was the tiniest reach. When his thumb brushed delicately against her cheek and onto her neck a line of goosebumps followed it down, and in the pit of Korra's stomach a tiny speck of desire broke through the haze of uncertainty.

            Korra meant to speak, but her breath caught in her throat and she recognized the mute gaping of her mouth that came when she couldn't force words out. When she managed to ask, "What are you doing?" her voice sounded quiet and breathy and entirely too delicate to have been her own.

            But Bolin didn't say anything. He stood there watching her without meeting her eyes, and the sheepish grin she'd once found so startling crept back to his face. "I didn't come here to talk," he said again. Korra felt the slightest twitch in the hand on her neck, a twitch that tied her stomach in knots, and then that hand was planted firmly in the small of her waist. It landed there with such certainty and confidence that Korra gasped, and as Bolin drew closer to her again he whispered, "Tell me if you want me to stop."

            He kissed her again with the same gentle sweep as he'd done the first time, and now Korra expected it. There was, somewhere in the back of her mind, a tiny, nervous suggestion that told her to make him stop, but then she was kissing him back again and the knot in her stomach tightened and warmed until the idea of stopping was lost in the moment and all Korra could understand was that the longer her mouth stayed pressed to Bolin's the more she could feel his insistence grow. There was a slow, distinct rhythm in the way his mouth moved that pressed in and drew back, and with each ebb and flow their bodies drew closer until Korra felt herself melting against the door beneath the heat of Bolin's chest pressed against her own.

            For a second time, he drew away and for a second time he whispered, "Tell me if you want me to stop," except this time she felt the words on her cheek. Then his mouth was on her neck, and a cold-but-hot shock of adrenaline numbed Korra's brain so the only thing that could force its way to the front of her mind was a surprised repetition of, "Oh."

            Korra didn't know which sensation should be grabbing her attention, if it was his mouth on her neck or that his hand slid delicately from her waist to the lowest part of her hip or that the other was beginning to make its way down her arm. She didn't know if she should be concerned that her breath was beginning to come in quick but deep gasps or that the warmth that had emanated from the knot in her stomach had started spreading through her body to places she hadn't expected it to go. It was, in a way, a sensory overload the likes of which she'd never felt before. And how could she have felt it before? No one had ever done this to her, and there was no way she could elicit the same primitive reaction in herself.

            "What are you doing?"

            "I figured it was obvious by now."

            "Why?"

            Korra felt Bolin's sigh, and as he wrapped his arms around her he dropped his forehead onto her shoulder. He stayed that way for a tense moment during which Korra could feel the tiny trembles in the muscles of his arms and the way the depth of his own breathing matched her own.

            "Because I want to feel like a person."

            What did that mean? Korra wasn't sure if she couldn't decode the statement because it had been particularly enigmatic or because her mind had all but turned off. She wasn't even certain why she'd asked the questions to begin with. A thick haze had fallen over her mind that blocked any manner of complex thought, through which she could register only the sensations being sent by her body.

            "And more than that, I want to know that I can make someone happy." Bolin paused and he pressed his face against Korra's neck, kissed it again so that goosebumps sprang up all over her. She could feel his breath on her skin and his mouth brushing against her when he spoke. "Because after everything that's happened and all the wrong I've done, I want to do something _right_. I _need_ this."

            "Bolin..."

            "Tell me if you want me to stop."

            In the moments after Bolin finished his statement, Korra didn't know what she wanted him to do. But then he was kissing her again, slowly and gently against the base of her neck, and then his hand was on her cheek again and he turned her face delicately so that her mouth met his for a third time, and Korra knew that somehow, she didn't want him to stop.

            And he didn't.

            It took a while for the rhythm to build again. She gave in to it, and when Bolin's hands moved over her body she found her hands moving on his, on his arms and on his wrists and on his chest. She didn't know why her hands went where they did or what she was expecting to find when they paused, but in the thoughtless jumble of her mind she recognized all the dips and rises of his body, the way his chest and stomach felt soft on the surface and hard underneath, the way his whole person seemed to radiate an enormous, undeniable warmth that spread into her through her fingertips when she touched him and through her body when he touched her.

            Everything Bolin did felt delicate and understated, and though Korra knew that he was moving her around the room, she was too caught in the moment to know how or where until the backs of her thighs hit the top of her bed and she fell clumsily backward, and for the first time since he'd entered her room, Korra looked at Bolin standing over her.

            It was as though she was looking at a completely different person. Something in the way he looked in that moment made him seem profoundly different from himself, and while Korra's brain slogged toward wondering why, he bent low and raised her shirt and then his mouth brushed against her stomach, and the swell of feeling forced the thought away.

            He stayed there for a time doing things to her middle that made her toes curl and her whole body shudder, and the swell of feeling turned to a surge of desire that Korra couldn't contain. She suddenly sat and grasped at Bolin's arms and pulled him toward her in a kiss that she initiated without a second thought, driven by body alone.

            Korra knew in the back of her mind that this was escalating. There could be no denying that this was escalating, but she couldn't know for certain if the nervousness she felt over the ever-increasing intimacy of their touching was making the whole experience better or worse. There was no denying the anxiety was there, but it wasn't a bad anxiety, and whenever Bolin advanced on her it faded away as the new feelings coursed through every inch.

            His shirt was gone, and Korra didn't know when he'd lost it. His thigh was between her thighs, pressed against her, and then his hand was there, too.

            "Tell me if you want to stop."

            "I've never done this before."

            Korra watched a coy look crawl onto Bolin's face, and in the instant before his lips met hers again he whispered, "I have."

            Everything after that happened too fast for Korra to understand, and everything that happened surprised her with how different it was from what she expected. She'd imagined sex before, but in her mind, it had been ugly and violent and utterly animalistic, and she'd worried that when it finally happened to her she'd be afraid. There was nothing violent or ugly about this, it was gentle and slow and quiet, and the most frightening thing that happened was that Korra's body seemed to move of its own volition, a fact she knew only because her thoughts had all but stopped and she became more aware of the physical than she'd ever been before. She felt her whole body open to Bolin's touch, swelling beneath him and moving in the way his hands directed.

            Eventually there came a time when the sensations changed, when Korra stopped feeling each individual touch because the whole of her body had given way to rolling waves of bliss dulled only by a weird pinching pressure deep inside. It surprised her how little she looked at Bolin's face and how little he looked at hers, yet how close they remained to each other and how looking at all the other parts of him proved just as satisfying--more satisfying--than the eye contact. Even the bruise on his ribs looked in some way different, because it reminded her that he must be enduring pain for their mutual enjoyment.

            With his arms wrapped around her shoulders and his hand cradling the back of her head, Korra felt safe, and with his head resting sometimes on her and sometimes not, his cheek sometimes pressed against hers and sometimes not, Korra felt loved. She heard gentle noises coming out of him and less than gentle noises coming out of her, and there came a point when her breath hitched and the noise came out particularly loud, and in that moment Bolin stopped and reminded her gently to keep her voice down because Asami was no doubt in the room next door, and there was something about thinking of Asami and the risk she presented that made the rest even more enjoyable.

            Korra couldn't say how long she lasted nor how long the two of them were engaged with one another, but the exhaustion began to outweigh the pleasure, and not long after she said that she was getting tired there came a final swell and a new warmth and then Bolin's forehead was pressed against her shoulder and Korra listened to his breathing. It was so similar and yet so different to how it'd been before; shallow and labored as it had been when he panicked, but there was no panic anywhere in sight. It was the breathing of exhaustion, breathing that Korra herself had fallen into not long ago, and Korra allowed him to stay over her on hands and knees until he seemed to have recovered. Then he was laying beside her on the bed, his leg crossed lazily over hers, and for the first time in a long time, she looked at him, and for the first time since this whole, strange encounter began, Korra's brain seemed capable of thought.

            She watched Bolin lying there, the heaving of his chest coming slower and slower as he relaxed, and she found it remarkable how flushed his face was and how a wet sheen had fallen over all of him, and she wondered if she'd gotten that sweaty, too, and if she had, if he'd smelled it or if he cared at all. And the longer she laid there beside him the more her stomach and chest filled with nervousness: Had she done it right? Why hadn't he said anything? Had she hurt him somehow?

            "Are you okay?"

            Korra was surprised by how hard she had to work to force out the words, not because of the heaviness of her breathing but because somehow her throat hurt and it came out of her a little raspy and a little breathy and a little bit low. Bolin nodded all the same, and then he wiped at his forehead with his forearm and looked at her the same way she'd looked at him.

            "Are you okay?"

            Korra nodded. Then Bolin nodded. Then the two laid there for another few minutes in quiet before Bolin sat up, and Korra wondered if he was going to leave. She'd always been under the impression that when two people did what they had just done together, they stayed in the bed wrapped in each other's arms until they slept.

            "Come on," Bolin said. "Shower time."

            Korra was confused, but she followed all the same, and the walk to the bathroom and the shower itself passed in the same heavy haze that had clouded everything else, except this time Korra understood that the haze was there and she worked very hard to see through it, and what she saw and what she felt left her profoundly confused and just a little bit worried.

            What had just happened? Why? How?

            The knot that had taken residence in her stomach wrenched in a bad way, in a way that made her feel sick, because Korra had never understood the power of the body to completely shut down the mind. She hadn't even realized her mind had turned off, couldn't remember when it had gone, but there was no denying that when it came back it slammed into her so hard she might've fallen over had Bolin not been so close.

            Less than two days ago she'd had a promising conversation with Asami about how things were going to get better when they returned to Republic City. Korra had left that conversation feeling like they might actually repair their relationship. She'd harbored thoughts that maybe Mako had been right when he suggested Bolin was using her to get back at Opal. She'd spilled herself to Bolin not so that he could come and act on it, but so that she could feel better about having been honest and straightforward about her feelings.

            But then he'd shown up and she'd given in to him and she'd done it more than willingly. And it was just like he said it'd be: He'd enjoyed it, and she'd enjoyed it, too, but now that it was over and all that was left was watching him bathe, Korra felt distinctly bad. Where was the loving afterglow? Where was the discussion about what came next? Where was the part where the two of them figured out what exactly this meant?

            Certainly, it had meant something. It had to.

            Bolin seemed to have noticed Korra's discomfort, because he paid much more attention to her between the end of their showering and when they returned to her room. He held her around the waist for the whole walk down the hallway. When they finally got back into Korra's room and he pulled back the blankets, she expected him to leave.

            He didn't leave.

            He deposited her on the bed and then slid in beside her, and he put his arm around her and pulled her close in a way that set her mind to conflict all over again. It was like some switch had flipped that made him comfortable with touching her and made her comfortable with touching him in different ways than it had been comfortable before.  But eventually this would have to end. Korra was leaving in the morning and Bolin wasn't coming with and everything they had just done would be for what?

            "Are you sure you're okay?"

            Bolin asked the question out of the blue, and when Korra looked up at his face so close to hers she couldn't miss the worry.

            "I don't know."

            Korra looked down. There was nothing about this whole scenario that didn't feel profoundly weird. Even now the act was finished and it seemed that things were calming back down, his arm was still draped casually over her middle and he was laying on her pillow beside her, and even though it should have been at the very least _romantic_ , it was just _strange_.

            "What happens now?" Korra asked at last. It was the only question she could think of that might hope to cover all the bases.

            "Right now? Right now, we go to sleep. We lay here and feel good for a while, then go to sleep."

            "But what about--"

            "You want to know a secret?"

            Korra shut up, and when she looked back up at Bolin the concern had fallen away from him and a softness had taken its place. There was a sort of kind understanding there, and that look combined with the gentle touch of his hand on her stomach threatened to make her melt all over again.

            "I feel kind of weird, too, right now. I didn't come in here planning to throw you on the bed. I came in here to kiss you because I wanted to know what I missed out on when I did it in the hospital, then I got caught up in it and you got caught up in it and there you have it. But this is going to be what we make it. We can make it a positive for the both of us or we can freak out and hate each other and be all weird. The fact is, right this second isn't the time to rack your brain about it because your brain is all hopped up on hormones and you can't think straight."

            "What about your brain?"

            "I don't think my brain _ever_ thinks straight."

            Korra smiled despite herself.

            "Listen," Bolin continued gently, "you're not supposed to leave until sometime around noon, right? So, let's sleep on this for right now, and you and I can wake up and talk when we're a little better rested."

            It seemed like a sound enough suggestion, Korra thought, so she let herself nestle in to Bolin's arms and plopped her head down on his shoulder--at which he grimaced and she apologized profusely--and when she finally fell asleep she did so thinking about what the heck she was going to do in the morning when she woke up laying on him with his arms still wrapped around her body, and what she might say to diffuse the tension.

            But when she woke, Bolin wasn't there.

 


	43. The Morning After

            Korra knew at once that Bolin was gone. Even before she opened her eyes she noted that his arms weren't around her, that her head wasn't propped on his shoulder, that his hand wasn't resting lazily on her middle. She felt a coldness in the bed and missed his weight pressing on the mattress beside her.

            Where had he gone?

            They were supposed to talk.

            For a few seconds, she wondered if she’d dreamed last night. It wasn't unheard of for people to have dreams like that, Korra knew; she'd had them herself on rare occasion. But there existed an ache in her thighs and between her legs that was all too real, a dull pain in muscles that she hadn't even known she was using. She hadn't even known they existed.

            She sat. She looked about the room. It was empty.

            Korra didn't know what she expected. After what had happened last night she couldn't ever have guessed how things might play out, but nowhere had Bolin being absent ever come into the equation. In every scenario she'd imagined, even the ones where everything fell apart and went all chaotic again, Bolin was at least _somewhere_ to be found. But he wasn't in her bed and he wasn't in her room. He wasn't anywhere.

            Korra clung to hope for a while. She clung to it when she ambled clumsily on jelly-legs to find the bathroom vacant and when his quiet place was abandoned and when no one in the kitchen or dining room had seen him in two days. She clung to it all the way to his bedroom, until she heard Pabu frantically scratching against the door and yowling. And even when she gently opened the door and Pabu scampered up her body onto her shoulder and cried into her hair, she still clung to hope. But then Bolin's room was empty, too, his bed made, and Korra knew. He’d never been here.

            He was gone.

            She slumped to the floor against his bed and stared at the stone while the panic ran its course. He could've killed himself. He'd been talking about it for a long, long time now, and considering how torn up he'd been about killing those people in Fire Fountain City, it wouldn't be so outrageous to think he'd have acted on the impulse. Korra had known for a while that he had the capacity to act on it, but she'd hoped that he would resist.

            It hit her very suddenly that maybe his acting out last night had been some kind of call for help, that maybe he'd hoped that she would know something was wrong and do something about it. But nothing about the way he'd acted had seemed like a call for help at all. He'd been confident and decisive, and even if he'd not been _happy_ he'd certainly not seemed depressed. When she'd fallen asleep on his shoulder he hadn’t seemed like the kind of Bolin who would kill himself. He seemed at the very least on the level. Then again, he'd gotten so good at acting in the last months that it was entirely possible that she'd misread the whole situation.

            Korra pushed the panic back down and gently patted Pabu on the head. The fire ferret quieted. Pabu being there meant that something truly awful had happened, because even when Bolin broke down he always kept Pabu with him. There hadn't been a time when Korra had found him in his quiet place alone. Pabu being locked in the room meant that Bolin had left with purpose. It had been a decision, and not one of impulsivity.

            She stood, wobbled on her exhausted legs, and set off. Soon enough the whole city would be awake, and Mako and Asami would be preparing to leave for Republic City. They were supposed to be gone by around noon. Now Korra doubted they would leave at all, at least not until they'd found Bolin dead or alive.

            Korra wasn't sure why Asami's room was the first place she went. Maybe it was because Asami had helped her through all manner of difficulty already, or because only a couple of days ago it had seemed that they'd reconnected. Korra regretted that. Or she regretted what she'd done with Bolin. She regretted something, but she couldn't be sure what it was because the longer she walked and the more she thought about his being gone or dead the more her head seemed to detach from the rest of her. By the time she knocked on Asami's door, everything seemed distant and surreal, and a horrible empty feeling weighed down her chest. It was the same feeling she'd had the day Beifong had told them Mako had died, that same void of disbelief that the news had left inside her.

            It took a few moments for Asami to answer. Korra knew she'd still been sleeping. It was too early in the morning for anyone in their right mind to be awake. It was too early to be bothering anyone with this nonsense. It was too early to be making everyone worry. But Asami answered the door all the same, and the moment Korra saw her sleepy face, she burst into ugly tears and dropped her face into her hands, and Pabu curled closer around her neck.

            Asami stammered her confusion, and before she could spit out whatever it was she was thinking, she grabbed Korra by the shoulders and pulled her into the room. She kept stammering while Korra stood there wailing, until at last she managed to say, "What happened?"

            "He's gone!"

            "What?"

            "Bolin is gone!"

            "What?"

            Korra looked up, her hands still cupped around her nose and her mouth, and she tried to read Asami's face. She couldn't tell if Asami was confused or upset or afraid. All Korra knew was that Asami's brow had angled severely and her eyes had narrowed, and she stood stone still while she examined Korra in return.

            "Bolin is gone," Korra sniffled. She had to contain herself. She had to calm herself. But she felt so betrayed. She felt so _used_. "He's not in my--" Korra stopped and shook her head. She couldn't say that. She couldn't tell Asami that they'd been together. If Asami hadn't heard them and hadn't already guessed at it, there was no use in telling her. "He isn't in his room and he wasn't in the kitchen and he wasn't in his spot, the spot where he trained, and Pabu was all alone and locked in his room and scratching at the door and--"

            "Slow down," Asami said.

            "He's _gone_ , Asami! We have to find him! He might've hurt himself! He might've..." Korra felt her eyes go wide as the realization hit her again, and she felt the tears welling up anew. "We have to find him!"

            Asami nodded, and without a moment's hesitation she grasped Korra about the elbow and pulled her from the room. She hadn't even changed out of her nightclothes. Something that Korra said must have sank in, because Korra could clearly see Asami's expression as worry now, and though she didn't know where Asami was leading her she was thankful. Asami could think. She would know what to do. She'd gotten sleep last night.

            Korra cried, one hand in Asami's and the other rubbing at her eyes as they made their way across the compound. She couldn't get the emptiness out of her head and out of her heart. She couldn't escape the feeling that she'd been used and discarded like trash, that Bolin had been lying when he told her that he'd not come into her bedroom meaning to throw her on the bed. He'd meant to do it the whole time, but he'd gotten to be such a good liar that Korra hadn't been able to see through him. He'd meant to do it and he'd known that it was going to be the last thing he did and that she would be saddled with the guilt and the anxiety and the terror of unknowing.

             Suddenly they were in Suyin's bedroom, and Su and Bataar were sitting up in bed staring at them with faces full of confusion while Asami struggled to explain what little Korra had said. She'd barely gotten through "Korra thinks something happened to Bolin," before Su jumped from the bed and started toward them, Bataar close behind.

            "Talk and walk," Su commanded.

            To Korra's relief, no one asked her anything outside of yes-or-no questions, and before too long, Mako and Opal and Huan and everyone available in the city had been rounded up in the courtyard. Su said nothing to them except that they needed to search every nook and cranny in the city for Bolin, and then they dispersed. More to her relief, Su told Korra and Asami very directly to go to her office and sit there until Korra calmed down, and that if they hadn't heard any news by that point then they could join in the search.

            Korra couldn't seem to pull herself together. Every time she thought she'd calmed down, another wave of emotion came over her, and the worst part wasn't that whenever it hit her she couldn't stop crying long enough to speak, it was that she couldn't pinpoint exactly what it was that she was feeling. Yes, there was some degree of betrayal there, but it went deeper than that. She'd opened herself up to Bolin in a way that she'd never opened herself up to anyone before, and he'd taken advantage of her. Maybe he hadn't even taken advantage of her because she'd been completely willing. But he'd certainly not treated her well. He’d ripped her heart out of her chest bare handed. He'd led her to believe that maybe something would come of their night together, that they would discuss their status and what their intimacy meant for their relationship on the whole. Korra believed that it meant _something_ but she didn't know what.

            Asami sat with her for a while but kept asking questions. She kept asking what was wrong, but even if Korra had been able to speak she wouldn't know what to say. Even if she knew what to say she wouldn't have been able to force the words out. If she told Asami that after everything that happened, Korra had finally acted on the curious attraction she'd been nurturing since the collapse, Asami would never speak to her again. But Asami would yell at her first. Bolin hadn't been stable. He hadn't been in his right mind. Even before Fire Fountain City it would've been appalling for Korra to act on those feelings, never mind what came after. He'd treated them all like dirt, Korra included, and he'd hurt them and hit them and given every indication that he was interested only in ignoring them all and keeping his silence till the end of time. Then he'd killed people and driven himself so crazy that he couldn't tell his friends from his enemies and had lobbed obsidian shards at his brother's face. He'd driven himself so far into the realm of the insane that he'd lost touch with reality on no fewer than two occasions, and he'd been so out of touch with reality that he'd believed all of them to be figments of some horrific nightmare from which he couldn't wake.

            And she'd slept with him.

            Had he been in his right mind? Had he known what he was doing? Had he been lucid? When Korra thought about it, it seemed like he'd been of sound mind. But when Korra thought about it there were points that she couldn't really remember. There were points when it seemed like _she_ wasn't of sound mind, when her body had pushed her brain straight out of her head and all she could understand was that _something felt good_ and that she wanted it to keep feeling good, and then her mind hadn't even been capable of that much. There had been several times where she hadn't been able to think anything at all, particularly in the end, and the moments either side of those thoughtless ecstasies were so conflicted and intense that they, too, were impossible to comprehend.

            Korra cried again because she wanted to hold the memory as a positive but couldn't. The physical aspect had been good, when he was on top of her and she was clinging to his arms and his shoulders and around his waist and he'd cradled her body close to his, and once she'd relaxed enough to enjoy it, the emotional aspect had been good, too. At least, what emotions she could process had been good. It hadn't been until afterward that she'd been conflicted, but Bolin had put that conflict to rest easily. He'd promised her that they'd talk about it. He'd promised her that they would work it out when she woke up. But then he'd left her hanging.

            Now he was gone.

            Eventually Asami left Korra alone, explaining that she wouldn't be able to live with herself if she didn't help in the search, and Korra sat on the floor against Suyin's desk for hours swinging like a pendulum between being overwhelmed with emotion and being a thoughtless husk. She cried so much that eventually she couldn't cry anymore. The sadness still welled up in her and she still felt the tightening in her stomach, but she couldn't cry.

            After a time, everyone came back to Suyin's office, and before they ever said anything Korra knew the news wasn't good. They all looked upset, obviously, but they all looked different kinds of upset. Asami's look had a degree of confusion in it and Opal looked as though she'd been crying for years. Su wore a mask of stoicism over a foundation of being a terrified parent. And then there was Mako, and he was the worst of all to look at, because he didn't seem sad or despondent or confused. He didn't seem angry. He just looked empty.

            Korra watched them enter the room all the same and she held her breath to keep herself from starting to cry all over again, and while Su, Opal, and Asami planted themselves on the couches, Mako paced a box around the room and along the bookshelves and in front of where Korra was sitting so that he came close enough that she could see the lingering moisture in his eyes.

            "You have to go back to Republic City," Su said as soon as she'd sat, and it sounded as though this was a continuation of a conversation they'd already begun. "I know you want to stay and keep looking but we can't tell the Firelord and the President of the Republic that they need to wait on you."

            Apparently, they'd not found him.

            "Now, I've got every guard in this city out looking. I've got scouts out beyond the borders and a group is heading into the mountains. I've got another group going toward the swamp. If he's out there, they'll find him."

            Korra held her breath to keep from crying again. If Su was sending troops into the areas around Zaofu it meant that they hadn't found a trace of him in the city. That meant there hadn't been a body and that meant he hadn't killed himself. Or he hadn't killed himself in city limits, anyway.

            "I'm staying here until we find him," Mako said as he paced. Even with tears rimming his eyes his voice remained remarkably even, perhaps a little angry. It wasn't a tone to be argued with, but Su didn't seem to care, not judging by the look on her face. "I can't go anywhere until we find Bolin."

            "You can't stay here," Su said again. "All the arrangements are made."

            Mako stopped pacing and threw his arms wide. Korra could see the emptiness and anger and frustration. "I'm not going anywhere until I find my brother!" he shouted. "He could be anywhere! Great we didn't find him dead here in the city, yeah, but who's to say we're not going to find him dead in the mountains? You heard what he said to me, Su! You heard it!"

            "I know I heard it. But there's no evidence that he's dead at all. There's no evidence that he hurt himself or had any plans to hurt himself. His clothes were gone. He _left_."

            Mako let out a cry of defeat and dropped heavily on the couch beside Asami, and he plopped his forehead onto his hands and sat still for a long time during which no one said anything.

            "Look, Mako," Su began quietly, "he probably just wanted to get away. He told me that he didn't want to stay here and that he didn't want to go back to Republic City. He probably left to get some solitude, just like he said he wanted to. Now, it's going to take a long time for the search parties to cover their areas, even if they use airships. I mean, when was the last time anyone saw him? I stopped in his room yesterday after breakfast, but I don't know. Did anyone else see him yesterday?" Su waited for a moment to allow anyone to speak up, but no one did. That meant that Korra had been the last person to see Bolin in the city. He hadn't even said goodbye to Opal. "So, he's got a head start on us. A full day head start, and if he set his mind to it or found some kind of transportation, he could be a long way away."

            "We already know he didn't hop a train," Asami said, downcast, "because I asked at all the railway stations. No one saw him. And he doesn't know how to drive so he couldn't have taken a car. He's not good enough to drive an airship on his own. Wherever he went, he went on foot."

            "Well, at least we've got one good piece of information," said Su dryly. Then she leaned back and curled her legs on the couch, joining the rest of them in an exhausted posture. "You've got to go back to the city, though, Mako. You all have to go back. You can leave it to Opal and me to keep up the search and let you know if we find anything. Staying here isn't going to do you any good, not any of you. You'll be just as stressed at home as you would staying here looking for Bolin, and if you stay here you'll have the added pressure of the Firelord and President Raiko breathing down your necks. That doesn't take into account how upset Lin will be that she set up all this diplomatic nonsense only to have you bail."

            It seemed the worst possible moment for Korra's emotions to swell again, but she felt it coming on even as Suyin spoke. She held her breath and tightened her stomach to fend against the crying, but the effort only made the single sob that came out that much louder and more explosive so that every eye in the room turned to her and she felt extraordinarily self-conscious.

            Without a word, Korra stood up and started carefully for the door. Her legs still ached-- they may have ached worse than before since she'd been off of them for so long--and she had to pay careful attention to making her stride seem as natural as possible. Even if it hurt to move, she couldn't stay here among them all, not if she was going to break down every ten minutes.

            "Korra, where are you going? Are you okay?"

            It was Su who had asked, and Korra didn't turn around. She wasn't sure she'd have turned around if anyone else had asked the question, either. Instead, she stopped at the door and drew a steadying breath before saying, as evenly as possible, "I've got to get my things together. I'll meet you guys at the airship."

            Then she left.

            She cried all the way back to her room, and even when she'd sat on her bed and pulled the pillow over her legs and buried her face in it, she cried some more. She didn't know why she was crying anymore except that she felt incomprehensibly awful. But what did she have to feel awful about? She'd done nothing wrong here. Bolin was the one who was in the wrong because he'd lied to her and convinced her to...

            No. That wasn't his fault. Korra had been just as involved in the decision as he'd been. But she'd done it believing that there would be something after, whether it was a talk or a breakdown or some change in their existing relationship. She'd gone into it thinking that maybe, in some backwards universe, it would help things. But it hadn't, not for her, anyway. Maybe it had helped Bolin leave, but all it did for Korra was leave her embarrassed and angry and feeling horrible about herself in ways she'd never believed possible.

            Korra wondered if his leaving had been her fault. She wondered if her performance had been bad enough to drive him away like that, or that her willingness to participate had made Bolin so uncomfortable that he couldn't stay. She wondered if he'd had some realization about Opal, about his status in Zaofu, about how drastically the relationships among every member of Team Avatar had changed that made it impossible to stay.

            Either way, she couldn't fill in the hole he'd left in her chest and the tears wouldn't stop coming out of her. Worse was that her whole bed smelled like him, and every time she breathed in through the pillowcase she remembered his touch and the sounds and how she’d kept thinking that everything was in some way meaningful.

            Korra couldn't have said how long she'd been crying when her door opened, and when she looked up and it was Mako standing there, her already upset stomach lurched even more. She hadn't expected anyone to come visiting her, especially not Mako, so there was no way she could hide the evidence of her breaking down. Still, she rubbed frantically at her eyes to clear away the tears and worked very, very hard to steady her breath.

            She heard the door close and she heard Mako's footsteps drawing near, though he wasn’t walking with his usual, purposeful stride. His steps seemed tentative, curious, and slow, and when Korra looked up to see his face, his expression matched.

            Mako stopped a few feet away from the bed and crossed his arms over his chest, then he watched Korra with appraising eyes. It looked like he was thinking hard about what he wanted to say. Korra tried to hold his gaze, but beneath the weight of his judgment, she couldn't hang on.

            "What do you know?"

            Korra didn't say anything. She stifled a sob.

            "Korra," Mako softened his tone, "what do you know?"

            "I don't know anything," Korra lied. "I'm just upset that after everything, he decided to leave."

            "You're lying," Mako said shrewdly. "I've known you way too long to fall for that line. When you get upset, you get mad. You don't cry. You barely even cried after you were poisoned. Something had to happen for you to be this torn up, and I'd be stupid not to guess that it has something to do with Bolin, being that you're the one who first reported him missing. I don't care if you cry, I don't care if you're upset, but you need to quit lying and tell me exactly what you know so I can find my brother."

            Korra sniffled and shook her head. It was useless. Detective Mako was too good at seeing the truth. "He was here last night. I saw him last night."

            "Okay, and what happened? Did he say something to you about leaving? What did you talk about?"

            Korra shook her head, a bit frantic and supremely afraid. She didn't know what to say. She and Bolin had barely exchanged words at all because any talking between the two of them would likely have stopped anything from ever happening.

            Mako's face screwed up in confusion and he rubbed at his forehead the same way that Bolin did when he was upset or confused, and then he said, "Then what happened?"

            The crying came again. It came every time she thought about what had happened and how it had happened and how she'd thought that there would be something afterward. She couldn't stop it and she couldn't hold it in, not even when Mako sat on the bed beside her and touched her arm all gentle like he cared, and not even when she looked at him to see how genuinely concerned he was about her reaction. She couldn't stop crying if her life depended on it. She felt so empty.

            "There's no way for me to be nice here, Korra," Mako said, and despite his words, it sounded like he was still trying to be nice. "I ask you what happened and you tell me, ‘nothing’ and then you burst into tears? I don't have to be a detective to know something’s wrong. So, tell me what you know so I can go find my brother."

            "He was here," Korra said again through the tears, "but we didn't talk. We barely talked at all."

            It was Mako's turn to shake his head, his confusion deeper now than it had been before. "Then what? Was he hurt? Was he upset? Did he just want company?"

            Another enormous sob came out of Korra. "No!" she cried, and Mako left her to weep for another few moments that he must have spent racking his brain. Before long, Korra felt his hand drop from her arm and she felt him lean back rather suddenly on the bed, and when she looked at him, he looked somewhere between dumbstruck and disgusted. Korra wanted to explain. She opened her mouth to say something that would placate him, but before she could say anything, Mako's eyes narrowed and he spoke first.

            "Something happened," Mako said, a cold edge to his voice. "What did he do to you? Did he hurt you?"

            Korra shook her head. "No," she said. Her voice was tiny and shrill. "No, I... We..." Her whole body shook so hard it felt that her bones would come apart. "We... Together..." She couldn't force out the words, but it seemed to have done the trick. When she'd finished speaking what little she could, silence fell over the room. It lingered there all thick and so heavy that it felt hard to breathe, and when she looked up at Mako again, it seemed that the realization had hit him.

            "No way," he stammered. "He wouldn't have... You didn't."

            Korra nodded.

            Silence.

            "You... You absolute idiot," Mako cried. "After everything that happened and how unstable and crazy he's been you _let him in your bed_?"

            Korra nodded.

            "And then you let him _leave?_ "

            She nodded again, then thought better and shook her head, then felt stupid and pulled her fists to her mouth and bit her knuckles. "I didn't _let_ him leave," she said, her voice shaking. "We fell asleep. Or I fell asleep. I don't know. We were supposed to talk when we woke up but I woke up and he wasn't here."

            Mako raged. He stood and clapped his hands over his face, then paced around a few laps, then stopped again and leveled his glare back on her in full. "Tell me that you at least took some kind of precaution," he snapped. "Tell me you didn't just let him in here to do whatever he wanted without thinking ahead."

            Korra stared at him, so confused that the tears stopped. He'd gone a bit red in the face, and the longer Korra sat there without speaking, the more horrified he looked so that when she finally said, "What are you talking about?" it felt like a blow that could level a city.

            "Where did... Did he..." Mako was stammering in full now. His anger had gone to some degree of panic or embarrassment.

            "Mako?" Korra asked. "Are... Are you mad at me?"

            He breathed very, very deeply and looked at the floor so that Korra couldn't see his face anymore. The tone of his voice was all she had to go by, and when he spoke, she knew that even through the panic he was still absolutely furious. But he tempered his words as best he could, he spoke slowly as though every word was painful, and he never looked at her through the whole, long question. "When you two were done, where'd he finish?"

            "What?"

            His eyes snapped up at her, panicked again. The rage was coming back.

            "I don't... I don't understand..."

            "You can't possibly be this stupid! Tell me you're not being this stupid! I don't want to have to come right out and say this kind of stuff about my idiot little brother!"

            Korra shook her head, terrified by Mako's anger because it might very well have been scarier than Bolin's. "Mako, I don't know what you're trying to--"

            "Did he come in you!?"

            It was Korra's turn to stammer now, and the longer she went without being able to say anything the angrier Mako seemed to become. But she didn't know what to say. She hadn't been paying attention. She hadn’t felt anything, but she wasn’t paying attention and hadn’t known what to feel for. There hadn’t been any physical evidence that she and Bolin had been together at all outside of the messiness of her bed sheets. She’d assumed that Bolin would have taken care of that side of things. She'd never considered it and they hadn’t talked about it. It must've been an oversight that they lost in their mindlessness.

            "Did he?" Mako shouted so loudly that his voice cracked. “Korra, did he?"

            She shook her head desperately, “I don’t think so! I don't know!"

            For a heartbeat, it looked like Mako would faint. He went very still and slack-jawed and his hands fell limp to his sides as he stared at her, thunderstruck.

            "You don't know," Mako said quietly, and then when he continued his voice amplified and the anger increased. "How the heck could you possibly _not know?_ Are you brain dead or something? Were you asleep?"

            Korra shook her head. She hadn't been asleep at all, but she hadn't been completely aware of things, either. She'd been so caught up in the feelings that she hadn't been paying attention, and she wanted to say so to Mako, but before she could figure out how to make herself sound less stupid he'd grabbed her rough by the upper arm and dragged her from the bed.

            Korra had never seen Mako so upset, and it frightened her. He held her arm so tightly that it hurt, that her elbow started going numb before they ever reached the door, and whenever she tried to pull away from him he just held on tighter. Then they were through the door, and though Mako's grip lightened a touch when it seemed that someone might see him manhandling her like he was, Korra knew better than to try and run. Still, she was afraid of where they were going and what they were doing.

            She understood soon enough. They were on the path back to Su's office.

            "Mako," Korra begged, "Mako come on, we don't have to tell--"

            "Oh yes we do," Mako replied. His grip tightened. He never looked back.

            "Please, don't tell Su. Please. Please don't tell. Don't make me do this."

            Mako stopped dead and rounded on her, intense and angry and apparently working hard to hold back. "Look, Korra," he hissed, "I don't know how to handle the girl side of this. I don't know what to do but if there's even the remotest chance that you’re..." Mako paused, he faltered, and he swallowed very hard. Then he looked down and shook his head. "I don't know what to do. She'll know what to do."

            Once again, they were off, and Korra didn't beg anymore. She let him pull her along the path to Su's office while her own terror built on top of her panic and her worry and the strange feelings of self-hate that Bolin had transferred to her like some horrible venereal disease.

            She hadn't considered the afterward. She hadn't considered any part of it at all, not the talk that Bolin had promised her and not the aching in her body that made her legs so wobbly still. She certainly hadn't considered the possibility of pregnancy. It hadn't crossed her mind in the slightest. And apparently it hadn't crossed Bolin's mind, either.

            She wanted to throw up.

            Mako barreled through Su's office door like a freight train, and he marched forward even while Su was on the phone, and halfway across the room he threw Korra forward so that she stumbled the rest of the way up to Su's desk. In the time between Mako's throw and Korra's recovery, Korra heard the clicking of the phone as Su replaced the receiver, but Korra didn't look up. She stared at the floor with her eyes closed and waited for the whole world to come crashing down on top of her.

            "Tell her what you did!" Mako yelled. "Korra, tell her!"

            Korra shot a sheepish glance at Su and watched as she stood up, but Korra couldn't see the look on Su's face. All she knew was that Mako was effectively radiating in his anger.

            "Tell her what you did! Tell her what you know!"

            Korra squeaked. Even if she wanted to, she couldn't force words out. She squeaked a second time, and she felt so embarrassed and horrible that she cried again.

            "What's going on?" Su asked, afraid. Then she rounded the table and ushered Korra toward the couches, and to Korra's relief, Mako didn't follow. "What's going on? Mako, what's the problem?"

            "He fucked her!"

            Korra looked up, and Su looked up, and both of them stared at Mako who stared back at them all red-faced and furious, his hands balled into fists at his side. He'd yelled so loudly that Korra was surprised there weren't guards rushing into the room; she imagined there would've been had Su not instructed them all to be on the search for Bolin. Instead, all that was left was silence during which Mako looked ready to burst, though Korra couldn't tell exactly what would come out of him. She wasn't sure what else _could_ come out of him.

            "Excuse me?" Su said after a time, more confused now than she'd been before Mako had yelled. She looked dumbly between Korra and Mako.

            "Bolin!" Mako raged. "Last night he went to Korra's room and he f--"

            "That's enough," Su snapped. "You need to calm down."

            "Calm down? You seriously want me to _calm down?_ I've been pretty level-headed ever since I got back here, even when my brother freaked out and then tried to kill me and then completely disappeared! I can handle all of that, Su, I can handle all that drama, but do you know where I draw the line? I draw the line when he sleeps with one of my best friends and ditches her without another word!"

            So, he wasn't mad because they'd slept together, but was mad because Bolin abandoned her? He wasn't mad at Korra, but at Bolin? It didn't make any sense. It was Korra's fault. She didn't understand.

            "I'm not ready for this!" Mako cried, more desperate than angry now. "I'm not ready for little Bolins to be running around all over the place because I can't even control the _big_ Bolin! We can't even _find_ him!" Mako paused and as she watched him, Korra felt the emotion welling back up in her. He was breathing hard now. He looked ready to cry himself. "I can't deal with this," he continued on, quieter now, his rage apparently spent, "I really can't. It's just too much. How am I supposed to handle all this stuff with my brother, with him being crazy and disappearing and... And..." He threw his hands up, gesticulating wildly at Korra like it would convey his meaning. "And _this_. And now I'm supposed to go back to Republic City and meet with the _President?_ I'm supposed to meet with the _Firelord?_ And after her home was just sacked by the people that _I_ was staying with and working for? I helped them do it! I helped them recruit! And now I'm supposed to come up with some crazy master plan to save the world? What the heck am I supposed to say to such powerful people? I'm just a kid compared to them! I don't know what to do any more than they do! I'm just an idiot who got confused and caught up on the wrong side of things and ended up watching a poor kid get strangled to death and it was all my fault! I thought my little brother was dead for like, two months! I _killed_ half my quad and watched dozens and dozens being kidnapped and killed by _other people_ and... I... I was literally in bed with the enemy and I helped them and worked with them! When am I supposed to process all this? When am I supposed to figure myself out? And now on top of all of that stupidity, _she_ could be pregnant! There could be kids! And Bo is gone! I can't... I can't... I..."

            Mako didn't even make it to the couch. He sat straight down where he'd been standing in the middle of the floor, and he dropped his head into his hands and fell strangely, freakishly silent. It was scary to see him react that way, and Korra couldn't help but stare in wonderment. He had seemed so much like Bolin when he snapped, except Mako had been remarkably controlled, and now that he'd spent all his anger he wasn't crying or panicking or anything of the sort. He just sat there, apparently exhausted. Weirder still was that Korra felt guiltier for Mako's single breakdown than she'd ever felt for any one of Bolin's because Mako was right: He'd been remarkably level-headed. He'd handled everything since their escape from Baihe Island with stoicism and rationality and incredible patience. And now she'd broken him.

            Korra felt Su's posture change, and she watched Su watching Mako with a straight, tense posture and an expression of unknowing. Then Su looked at Korra judgmentally and said very quietly, "Is he telling the truth?"

            Korra looked down, but she nodded all the same.

            Su sighed very, very deeply, and Korra missed the, "Oh dear" that Su seemed to utter every time something stressful happened. She said nothing now, but stood up and pulled Korra to her feet.

            "You kids have some serious problems with decision-making," Su said frigidly, and then she sighed again and the anger went out of her. "Mako, I'll take care of this as best I can. There are things we can do but they'll take time, so here's what's going to happen: You and Asami are going to go ahead to Republic City. Korra is going to stay here with me until we know for sure that she's in the clear, and then I'll send her along behind you."          

            Still on the floor with his head in his hands, Mako nodded in silence.

            "Now you stay here for a little bit and pull yourself together. This needs to stay quiet, and part of that means that you've got to be just as level-headed as you've been this whole time, okay? Asami and Opal are both smart, they're both observant, and they're going to know something's wrong if you're even a little bit upset. You have to keep this quiet."

            The room went silent, but Su wasn't satisfied.

            "Mako, look at me," Su said, and Mako looked at her obediently. His face was pale but dry and had settled back into the same expressionless mask he'd worn that morning. Su sighed again. "Everything is going to be okay, but you're right: You've got too much on your plate right now. Please, please leave this to me. Leave finding your brother to me. I hope by now you can trust me enough to believe I'll do everything in my power to set this all right."

            Mako nodded again.

            Korra couldn't help but shake her head, frantic and ready to beg, but Su clamped her hand over her mouth and Korra had to be silent.        

            "Go get yourself ready to depart," Su continued sternly, "and I'll get Korra squared away. She won't be there to see you off, but I will, and hopefully by that time I'll have some plausible excuse to offer up to explain why Korra isn't going home with you."

            "Thank you."

            Mako's voice had been so quiet that Korra could barely hear him over the sound of her own breathing, and the despondence in his tone made her want to cry again. She hated herself. She was afraid and angry. She hated Bolin. She hated it all. But before she could say anything about it, Su was pulling her out of the room.

 

*****

 

            Mako sat for a long, long time on the floor of Su's office with his face in his hands, working as hard as he could to keep from exploding, and again he wondered if he regretted coming home. Nothing had gone right. If everything had started falling apart before he'd entered the picture, it was in full free-fall now, and it was only a matter of time before it all hit the bottom.

            Maybe it already had hit the bottom, because what could be worse than what Bolin had done to Korra? Or what Korra had done to Bolin? Or what the two of them had done to each other? What could be worse than Bolin disappearing?

            But Su was right. He had to maintain his composure and keep up the front of stoicism that he'd worked so hard to develop since coming home, because if he lost it now, everyone would know that something was wrong beyond Bolin's absence. Even if it scared the life out of him, he had to trust Su to make things right again, and if Su couldn't make things right, Mako had to trust that she'd figure out how to break the news gently. Still, the thought of Bolin and Korra together made his stomach writhe, and the thought of children between the two of them made the acid rise in his throat so he thought he would throw up on Su's carpet like a dog.

            After a while, Mako felt steady enough to stand up and make his way back to his room, and he sat there on his bed in the quiet checking and double checking his notes to make certain that they were solid. He had nothing else to do except for lying around, and lying around would free his mind to think about how afraid he was.

            Before noon, he collected Pabu from Korra's notably empty room and left for the dock, where a Zaofu issue airship had been readied for their departure, and Mako boarded and tucked his notes away safely. Then he sat and watched out the window until Asami and Opal approached the boarding ramp, Su close on their heels, and he went out to meet them.

            He wondered what Su would say, because everyone looked incomprehensibly upset already.

            "Asami, Mako," Su said genially, "it's been a pleasure to have you in Zaofu. You're welcome here any time. I’m sorry it’s all gone so crazy."

            "Where's Korra?" Asami asked.

            "She's going to stay here and help us find Bolin. She offered to head to the Banyan Grove Tree to see if she couldn't pick up his location. She left a couple of hours ago hoping that she'd be back by this evening."

            "Oh," Asami said, confused and a little downcast. "I didn't see her go."

            Su shrugged but mentioned nothing more about it, and she didn't glance at Mako, either. Nothing about the way she acted indicated that she was lying in any way, and Mako appreciated it. If Su could keep a straight face even after all of this nonsense, Mako could do it, too.

            It didn't surprise Mako when Su hugged him and Asami in turn, but it did surprise him when Opal hugged him just as tightly as Su had. She'd never hugged him before. He couldn't remember a time when she'd touched him at all, and it struck him as odd that she'd choose now to do it.

            "We're going to find Bolin," Opal said firmly, her arms still around him, "I promise. I'll call you every day and keep you updated, okay?"

            Mako understood the hug as a gesture of familiarity, as a gesture between two members of one family who shared the same fear and concern, and he nodded his appreciation because if he said anything out loud he was liable to cry. Then Opal let him go, she hugged Asami, and then it was time to leave.

            He didn't look back when he boarded, and he spent the whole ride back to Republic City in silence, watching out the windows and wondering how he was going to get his mind off of everything that had happened. He wondered how he was going to move forward knowing what he'd left behind, both in Zaofu and in Fire Fountain City. He watched out the window and wondered what in the world he was going to do.


	44. The Detective

            Mako hadn't believed that he would feel any degree of emotion upon his arrival in Republic City. The last time he'd arrived, on the boat from Baihe Island with Yaozhu and the rest of his quad, he'd had the littlest bit of anxiety and a certain amount of regret, but he'd managed to suppress it enough to get his men off the boat and into the safety of the shadows. But when he stood on the bridge of the airship beside Asami, watching the skyline draw ever nearer, he felt his throat getting tight. He felt a bit verklempt so that when Asami looked at him and asked if he was okay, all he could do was nod and clear his throat uncomfortably.

            Truth be told, he was actually okay. The rush of relief that came over him when he first laid eyes on the statue of Avatar Aang and saw the glare of the sun reflecting off of the arena caught him off guard. It was the knowledge that after everything that he'd seen and experienced, he was truly home. Where last time he'd come to the city longing to see Asami and wishing desperately that he could run away to Beifong or to Air Temple Island, he now knew that he could. He could go any time he wanted without the fear of repercussion. He could do what he wanted without having to worry for the safety of the people he’d come to care for because he was away from the Society and the rest of his quad was dead.

            That thought sobered him a little bit, deflated the bubble of anxious energy and loosened his throat enough that he felt he might be able to talk. But Asami didn't say anything else to him at all. In fact, she didn't stay on the bridge as the airship touched down on Air Temple Island's dock, so Mako was left alone to watch the ground come closer and to see Tenzin and Lin making their way forward. When he saw them, the nervousness came back because he didn't know how he was going to explain Korra's absence. He didn't know how he would explain Bolin's, either, because it wouldn't do to tell them all that he'd run away or gone missing or whatever it was that he'd done, and it would do even less to tell them that Korra was missing because she'd gone cave diving with Bolin and he'd left her alone in the dark all uncertain and afraid.

            Mako knew he'd have to lie and that he'd have to do it before Asami said something to give it away. And he'd have to make it plausible enough for people as shrewd as Tenzin and Lin to believe.

            He collected Pabu from his hiding place beneath the bridge console and made his way to the boarding deck, nervous all over again except that this time it wasn't a good nervousness.

            To Mako's surprise, both Lin and Tenzin greeted him with unusual warmth--they greeted Asami the same way--and their apparent happiness made Mako even more uncomfortable when they asked about Korra and Bolin. But Mako spoke up immediately and without ever really considering what he would say.

            "Bo is staying in Zaofu to keep healing, and Korra came up sick last night so she'll be following as soon as she's over it."

            Tenzin and Lin exchanged confused and slightly skeptical looks, and Asami glanced at Mako, suspicious. He nodded at her shortly, and after the initial confusion was spent, things got straight to business.

            "I'll have to get you on the registry," Lin said brusquely as Tenzin led the lot of them back toward the Airbender Compound. "It's a mountain of paperwork, and it'll need to be submitted as soon as possible so I can formally reenlist you on the force. I'd like you to come to the precinct this evening so that we can get everything squared away."

            Mako didn't raise his eyes from the ground, but he did stop walking and very nervously patted Pabu around the head, and everyone else halted, too. And then they rounded and looked at him, but Mako didn't watch.

            "Chief, with due respect, no. I'm not coming in."

            Mako did glance up now, and Beifong looked scandalized. To be fair, he'd never refused an order from her before, even if that order was a mere suggestion. More, he'd never spoken to her with such authority. Mako hadn't realized that he'd taken that tone with her until after the words had come out of him, and in the immediate afterward he imagined that it was the result of his time spent as Captain, being the middleman between low-ranking foot soldiers and Commanders. He imagined it was because of how he'd been forced to interact with Guan.

            "I'll take your paperwork," Mako continued, a little softer now. "I'll take it home and have it back to you tomorrow at the meeting."

            "We assumed you would be staying here," Tenzin said. "We've got a room prepared."

            Mako shook his head. "I'd rather go back to my apartment, if that's okay. I appreciate the offer, but I've been away for way too long. I want to sleep in my own bed, providing I've still got a lease on the place."

            "I saw to it that it was held while you and your brother were absent," Beifong said, and she brought out her own key ring. She pulled off a familiar key and offered it to him. "It's still there."

            Mako nodded. "Then I'd just as soon be on my way."

            No one argued with him because no one could. They stopped at the Airbender compound for a few moments while Lin collected Mako's registry paperwork, and in her absence, Tenzin explained in rather fatherly fashion that he would be happy to escort Mako to their meeting with the President and the Firelord simply as a matter of moral support. Though he was surprised by the offer, Mako accepted it, and before too long he and Asami were on the ferry back to the mainland.

            "So why did you lie about Bolin and Korra?"

            Mako supposed it was only a matter of time before Asami asked the question. He supposed it was only fair for her to ask it while he was cornered on a boat in the middle of the bay and couldn't run away from it, too.

            "Because everyone is already stressed," Mako said. Again, he patted Pabu, still on his shoulder, as though it had become a nervous habit. He wasn't sure why he was nervous about that part: It was the truth. "Right now, we've got to focus on getting through the meeting so we can figure out a plan of attack. Once we're through tomorrow we can tell them about Bolin."

            Asami didn't look satisfied. Her skepticism seemed to have deepened.

            "I'll call Su tonight," Mako sighed. "I'll get an update on the situation so that tomorrow after the meeting I can give everyone the bad news about Korra and Bo."

            "Bad news about Korra?"

            Mako hadn't realized that he'd slipped, but he played it off naturally enough. Apparently, his time with the Society had made him a better liar, too. "You know what I mean," he said simply, and Asami seemed to accept it.

            "She and I had planned to take you out for dinner," Asami said, a little brighter now, "and I'd still like to honor that, even if she's not here. How about I pick you up around nine and we can go to Kwong's for a late meal, my treat?"

            Unsure what he thought about the prospect, Mako watched the water and stayed quiet. While it did seem like a nice gesture and a meal of that quality would absolutely hit the spot, the registry paperwork that Lin had given him was long and complicated, and he worried that it would take an unreasonably long time to slog through it all.

            "Come on, please?" Asami begged. "Let me do this one nice thing for you."

            Mako shrugged, still uncertain. He turned to Asami and brandished his paperwork at her. "I've got to do this tonight."

            "Bring it with, I can help you." Asami's attitude was infectious. "Besides, I'd love to see what all the drama is about with this registry, and being that I'm a nonbender I'll probably never have another chance to look up close at it."

            He couldn't refute that, so he didn't even try.

            "So, it's a date then," Asami continued happily, and by this time the ferry was pulling into port on the Republic City mainland. Asami hooked Mako playfully by the elbow and walked with him off of the boat, and when she let him go she offered him a disarming smile. "I know it's been hard since you got back," she said, "but I want you to enjoy yourself for at least a couple of hours if you can. Go home and take care of yourself, get cleaned up or call Su and check on the Bolin situation, see if Korra found anything at the Banyan Grove Tree, and you can fill me in at dinner. We'll fill out your paperwork together and it'll be easy."

            Mako nodded, and after she'd pecked him gently on the cheek the two went their separate ways.

            It took Mako twenty minutes of walking to get to his old apartment building, and the sight of it dredged up some negative feelings. As he ascended the staircase he wondered if Bolin had changed anything. He wondered if he'd still have a bed. If Bolin truly believed Mako to have been dead, it would've been reasonable for him to have gotten rid of all of Mako's personal effects. Mako supposed that if such was the case he'd either sleep in Bolin's bed or on the couch: Neither would be as comfortable as his own bed, but as long as he was in his home surrounded by old, familiar things, he'd be happy.

            He almost cried when he walked in to be greeted by the same old Fire Ferrets poster hanging above the couch on the wall, by Pabu chittering happily and jumping to the floor to skitter to the kitchen. Everything was exactly as he'd left it. Everything looked the same and it smelled the same and it felt the same as it had before he'd departed for Ba Sing Se. The only thing that was missing was Bolin, and though it hurt Mako to think about what had happened to him and how desperate he must have been to do something so juvenile as _running away_ , he supposed it was necessary.

            For a while he drifted between rooms, examining his old belongings and feeling surprisingly little attachment to them. It was the atmosphere that he'd missed, not the material possessions, and that realization made him sadder still. The apartment felt empty without Bolin. Yes, there was a bit of nostalgia, but there was a sadness that ran beneath the whole thing that tempered Mako's homecoming joy and made him feel oddly homesick, even in his own home.

            Mako showered and dressed and fed Pabu some dried instant noodles he found in the cupboard, and after all of that was said and done he plopped heavily on the couch and began rifling through the documents that Lin had given him. They were complicated and asked questions that Mako wasn't certain he'd be able to answer, not because they were particularly difficult questions, but because they discussed things like _parental affiliation and employment experience_ , which made approximately zero sense to him at all. There were pages for his personal information, his family information, spousal information, if it applied. There were places to list character attributes and criminal records and past addresses. It asked for his employment history. All told, it was no wonder people were as offended by the registry as Su and everyone else had indicated: This was a gross violation of privacy, and for what? To make sure the police knew someone was a firebender? Why couldn't they just check a box that said, "Yes, I'm a firebender," or, "No, I'm not a firebender?"

            Mako had barely gotten through reading the fourth page of the questionnaire when Asami knocked on his door, and he gathered the paperwork and followed her down to the street where she'd parked her Satomobile at the curb. Then they were off, and they spent the ride to Kwong's Cuisine in silence. They spent most of the first minutes at their table in silence, too, because Mako wasn't sure what to say and Asami was busy perusing the menu. If anything, whatever awkwardness Mako felt was on his end only, and he wondered if Asami had caught on to his discomfort.

            With a sigh, Mako took to browsing the menu himself, and though a number of high-price dishes stuck out at him, his eyes were ultimately drawn to a single item: komodo dragon dumplings. He ordered them without hesitation, and when Asami gave him a very strange look about it, he just shrugged and said, "They're good, once you’ve got used to them."

            They sat in quiet for a while longer, watching people pass by and admiring the plates delivered to other tables, but then Mako decided that he'd had enough of that, and he turned to Asami purposefully.

            "Can I talk to you?"

            Again, Asami's face screwed up and she actually laughed at him before saying, "Of course you can, we're at dinner. What else are we supposed to do?"

            Mako didn't share her amusement. "No," he said, clarifying, "I mean about... Things."

            "Things?"

            He fidgeted and he didn't like that he was fidgeting, and he stared down at his fingers and watched them move like they weren't even attached to his body. He couldn't help it. He was nervous.

            "Do you think I'm going to get in trouble for serving the Society?"

            "What?"

            "I helped them. A lot of bad things happened as a direct result of my actions." Mako paused and looked up at Asami, and she didn’t look happy anymore. She looked very concerned now, and as if to punctuate it, she put her hand atop his gently, the same way she used to do when she was trying to prompt him to speak. "I recruited the Triads when I was deployed here with my quad. I got them to do reconnaissance and report back to His Excellency. And then I participated in a raid--an attack, I mean--here in the city. I mean, I tried to free people as they were taken captive but I couldn't get to all of them, and I had to make it look like I was working on the right side."

            Mako paused, a little confused. Had the firebending society's ideals become so ingrained in his mind that he'd just referred to Guan as _His Excellency_ and the perpetrators of heinous kidnappings and attacks on innocent civilians as _the right side?_ He wondered how many other times he'd slipped like that. He hadn't even known he was doing it.

            "I don't think you'll be prosecuted, if that's what you mean," Asami said. There was something straightforward about the way she spoke that helped Mako feel reassured. "I suppose it depends on what happens tomorrow at this meeting. If you go in there and can give them all the information they're looking for, they're going to be happy. If you can point out flaws and weaknesses and give intelligence they might not be able to get otherwise, you're going to be fine."

            It was at this point that their food arrived at the table, and when Mako accepted his plate, Asami looked at it with furrowed brows. He offered her the first bite, and it took about ten seconds after she'd nibbled at a corner for her to grab for her glass, and when she’d finished hers, she grabbed his as well. Mako laughed at her for a few seconds before realizing that the way he'd just laughed at her was the same way Bingwei had laughed when Mako had tried the food for the first time. He fell silent.

            "What _is_ that??" Asami gasped.

            "Komodo dragon sausage," Mako replied, deadpan. He regarded the dumpling from which Asami had taken her nibble, and then ate the whole thing in one bite. It didn't even faze him until he looked back to see Asami staring at him with a look that teetered on the border between disgusted and amazed.

            "How are you eating that?"

            "Practice."

            They ate in relative quiet, and though Mako considered opening up more to Asami about his time with the Society--his time in captivity, if he was honest--Asami spoke first.

            "Did you talk to Su?” she asked.

            “No,” Mako said, honest. “I got caught up with the registration.”

            Asami sighed very deeply, and she looked down at the table. Then she said, “I'm worried," and it drew Mako's immediate attention, "about Korra. I'm worried about Bolin, too, don't get me wrong, but at this point I think he can take care of himself. I'm upset that he left without saying anything to anyone, but if that's what he felt like he needed to do, who am I to argue?"

            Mako couldn't refute it, and if he'd had any guarantee that Bolin hadn’t ran off and killed himself, Mako would've probably been okay with the prospect of Bolin's leaving, too. Su had admitted it: Bolin wanted to leave, he'd said so on multiple occasions, so it only followed that eventually he'd get fed up and go.

            "But Korra really worried me this morning," Asami continued, oblivious to Mako's introspection. He eyed her carefully as she spoke, preparing himself to keep a straight face no matter what she said: He had to keep the Korra situation on the down low. "She's been worrying me for a couple of days, actually. A couple of days ago I caught her crying her eyes out, and she said that she felt alone. She felt like everyone was against her."

            "What do you mean?"

            "She was right," Asami said, and for a moment Mako didn't think she would address his question. "She said that Opal and I were pulling her on one side, trying to get her to turn on Bolin, and on the other side Su and Bolin were pulling her to stick with him. She said she felt spread thin, like she couldn't talk to any of us because she was too scared of what we'd do or say. She said she worried that we'd all blame her if things went wrong. I felt so guilty. I hadn't realized she felt like that, and when I asked her about it she said she'd been feeling that way for a long time."

            It explained everything, Mako thought, and to buy himself some time to think he sipped at his drink again. If Korra had been feeling alone it was no wonder she'd given in to Bolin's advances so easily. If she was feeling vulnerable and unloved, she'd take any opportunity she could to prove it wrong. Korra had always been that way: She'd always needed validation. Even in her role as Avatar she'd always felt like she should be needed, and when she felt like she wasn't, she got down on herself. Why wouldn't she be the same with personal matters?

            "I told her I love her," Asami said, "and I told her that I was sorry for judging her so badly and jumping to conclusions. I think she forgave me. I hope she did. I was really hoping that we could give things another shot once this whole _Society_ business toned down." Asami looked at Mako pointedly now, and he kept his face as still as stone. "Do you think she'll give it another try?"

            Mako shrugged haplessly. "I can't see why she wouldn’t," he said, but he could most certainly see why she wouldn't. Korra had given herself away and then been tossed out. She'd opened up to Bolin and he'd used her and been done, or that was how the situation had presented itself, anyway. Mako imagined that Korra would be guarded from now on, maybe a little bit cold, and while she might try to play things off as normally as she could, there would be no denying that her experience with Bolin would leave her changed.

            But Asami was different. Korra and Asami shared a different relationship. It seemed built on a deeper foundation. Most relationships that Mako knew of were built on a foundation of physical attraction and everything else came afterward, but Asami and Korra's relationship had been built on the interior, on their emotional compatibility and a long-standing, extraordinarily strong friendship. Maybe Asami could help Korra get over this.

            Still, it wasn't his place to say anything. It would hurt too badly. If Korra wanted Asami to know what she'd done with Bolin, it was Korra's decision, and how much Korra mentioned about it would be her decision, too. If she wanted to leave it vague, that would be fine, and if she wanted to explain the real reason she'd stayed behind at Zaofu, Mako imagined it would be fine, too. After all, Asami had always been both understanding and forgiving.

            The somber mood lasted the rest of their dinner together, though both of them tried a few times to dig it out. They didn't fully recover until after they'd left the restaurant and were halfway back to Mako's apartment, when Asami suddenly said, "We never did your paperwork."

            Mako hadn't even considered it.

            "Why don't I come up and help you with it? You mentioned there's a lot, and I'm sure it would be better to do it together."

            Mako nodded. "Yeah. That'd be good."

            When they'd settled on the couch and Mako spread the papers out on the table before them, Asami set straight to work mocking the entire process, and that made Mako feel better. By the second page, he'd begun to grin at her snarky remarks. By the third page, Pabu had come out to investigate their laughter, and by the fourth page Mako had joined in on her lambasting of the President and his ridiculous registry. It took several hours and some degree of brain-racking to finish it all, and by that time both of them were yawning and dead tired.

            "You can crash here tonight," Mako said. He stood and stretched and Pabu scampered into the bedroom. "You can sleep in Bo's bed and head home in the morning."

            Asami nodded and followed Mako to the bedroom. He tossed her some old clothes of his to wear to bed, and within twenty minutes they were both lying down and Mako was listening to Asami sleep. As he fell asleep, he was glad that he was home.

            Early next morning Mako woke to hear Asami primping in the bathroom and talking happily to Pabu, and even after she'd left to attend to business at Future Industries, he couldn't fall back asleep. He gave up trying after a half hour of lying in bed staring at the ceiling, and he spent his morning reviewing his registry paperwork and going back over his personal statement for the thousandth time. He just couldn't shake his nerves.

            At a wholly reasonable hour, Mako dug out his Republic City Police uniform and felt very strange putting it on. He wasn't sure how he felt about wearing a uniform after everything he'd gone through in the last one. When he'd settled in, he gathered his papers and made his way down to the streets to head for Air Temple Island.

            With a few hours before the meeting, Mako sat and had two cups of tea with Pema and Jinora, and when Tenzin emerged from his morning meditation, the two of them went back over his paperwork again in Tenzin's study. There was something oddly reassuring about having someone as experienced as Tenzin sitting beside him, telling him when answers needed to be changed or when he could scratch personal information and simply write, "not applicable." When it was time to leave, Mako might've said that he felt confident, but all the same he didn't deny Tenzin's offer to take him to the presidential manor.

            When they were outside of Raiko's office and Mako stood staring up the stairs, all that confidence seemed to die and he felt utterly dwarfed. The weight of the whole situation hit him all at once, and suddenly he felt very stupid about having laughed at his registry paperwork with Asami. This was all very serious. People had died. People would keep dying. An entire capital city had been overthrown. And he'd laughed at it.

            Uncomfortable, Mako cleared his throat and looked at the ground. "Uh, Tenzin?"

            Tenzin looked down at him, but Mako didn't look up.

            "If it's not too much trouble, would you mind sitting in on this with me? I... I might need some help."

            "Well, I wasn't invited to the meeting," Tenzin replied thoughtfully, and Mako felt himself deflating. "But I'm sure Lin will be okay with my being there, and if we explain the situation to President Raiko he'll be all right eventually. The Firelord and I are on good terms."

            Mako did look up now, and Tenzin offered him a gentle, paternal smile.

            "I'll give it a try," he said at last, and he led Mako into the building.

            Everyone except for Raiko greeted Tenzin with relative warmth, and Raiko relented after his skepticism had faded out. Tenzin had to offer little reasoning for his being there outside of providing some support for Mako, and when Beifong nodded her acceptance of the arrangement, no one else could really complain.

            Mako felt profoundly outclassed when he sat at the table with the others. They were arranged as a sort of panel, with Beifong, Raiko, and the Firelord on the side opposite himself and Tenzin, and if that wasn't imposing enough on its own, Mako was seated directly across from Firelord Izumi. She kept scrutinizing him, a little narrow-eyed and very cleverly. It was like she saw something in him, like she knew something about him that the others didn't know, but for the life of him, Mako couldn't guess what it was. He'd only met the Firelord a couple of times, and he'd never exchanged much in the way of words with her outside of a polite, "Hello," and a formal bow.

            The first thing Mako did was slide his registration toward Raiko. He said, "Here's my paperwork," as officially as he could, and Raiko collected it wordlessly. Then Mako was left to sit in awkward quiet while Raiko sifted through it, and Mako shot a worried glance to Tenzin, who nodded shortly.

            "Everything looks to be in order," Raiko said. "I understand you only arrived in Republic City yesterday?"

            "Yes, sir."

            "I'm impressed that you were able to turn this around so quickly."

            "Thank you, sir."

            "Did you have any assistance with this? I like the idea of keeping track of who's had eyes on your papers."

            Mako nodded. "Asami Sato helped me."

            Raiko made a note on the front page of the packet, and after he'd punctuated his notes very pointedly, he nodded. "Smart young woman, Ms. Sato."

            "Yes, sir, she is."

            "Well, let's get to it then," Raiko said, suddenly down to business. "Chief Beifong informed us that you've been drafting a statement to give us all the background knowledge on your experience with this terrorist organization."

            Mako nodded, and he found it a little strange how his stomach hadn't tightened at Raiko's sudden change in tone, but at the fact that he'd referred to the Society as a terrorist organization. He thought again about last night when he'd referred to the leader of said terrorist organization with extreme honorifics, and he wondered just how brainwashed he'd truly been.

            Still, Mako produced his statement and read it word for word to the table, and every time he glanced up he noted how raptly the others were watching him, how carefully they must be listening to every word he said. Once in a great while he'd find one of them making a note about something. It made him self-conscious, but he knew that if he stuck to the script, he'd be fine. The script had everything in it that he could ever need to say, at least to catch someone up to speed on where he'd been and what he'd been doing, and it included every name, location, and date that he could remember. It went into painful amounts of detail with regard to the quarantine facility, the vetting process, the sorting into squads and the brutal physical training, the hierarchy of captains and commanders and quads, and the potential for human trafficking violations on top of it all. But it didn't go into detail about his personal relationships, about how he'd all but fallen for the ex-fiancée of the leader of the whole organization, about how he'd acted as elder brother to the world’s most jubilant combustion bender before he'd been unceremoniously murdered. Mako supposed that didn't matter anymore. To these people, it would be fluff. But whenever Mako thought on that fluff, it tore his insides apart.

            At length, Mako ended his statement with a brief recollection of Korra, Asami, Bolin, and Opal's infiltration of Fire Fountain City, and when he mentioned it, Beifong went a bit pale and the Firelord narrowed her eyes. Mako hoped he hadn't stepped out of line.

            For a while after he’d finished, they sat in quiet, and it looked to Mako like they were all thinking very hard about what he'd said. Izumi read back through her extensive notes again, and as she did, Mako noted how well-composed she was and supposed that she hadn't been named the Firelord for nothing. Even in her exile, she seemed remarkably put together.

            "The Boiling Rock quarantine was destroyed," said Raiko out of the blue. Mako jumped. "Is that correct, Chief Beifong?"

            "Yes," Lin replied curtly.

            "And you said there were multiple other quarantine units, detective?"

            "Yes, sir," said Mako.

            "How many were there?"

            Mako blinked dumbly and worked to keep himself from stammering. He'd always tried to present the utmost in professionalism, reducing his stammering and nervous vocal fillers to a minimum, but he had a hard time of it now. "I don't know, sir. I know there were at least three, including the Boiling Rock."

            "All right," Raiko said a bit shortly but apparently accepting Mako's lackluster response, "then where were these other two facilities located?"

            Again, Mako blinked dumbly. But then he said, very straightforwardly, "I don't know, sir."

            "You mentioned some suspicion of human rights violations," Firelord Izumi interjected almost immediately after Mako had provided his answer. "Can you give more information on that?"

            Mako nodded. "They took captives. See, when they raided to liberate more firebenders, they would occasionally pick up earthbenders, waterbenders, and nonbenders. I'm not sure they ever got any airbenders, though." He looked at Tenzin, who offered no response. Then he looked back to the Firelord. "I don't know for sure what criteria they used to sort them out, but the captive women were... _Used_... By the soldiers. Well, they were used by the officers, anyway. Almost nightly they'd march the girls in and let the officers take their pick of who they wanted to... You know..."

            "And did you ever participate in this?"

            "No, ma'am."

            Mako almost regretted that he'd said the words so quickly, because when it came right down to it, he _had_ participated in at least one evening of such debauchery, but he didn't remember it. Toru had told him that he'd actually refused the advances of whatever girl Bingwei had chosen for him, so Mako wasn't sure if it truly counted as participation.

            "What'd they do with the other captives?" Beifong asked. Mako was surprisingly happy at the sound of her voice, all crisp and short as it always was. It was a voice of comfort and familiarity, a voice to which he had no issues responding.

            "The benders they put to work," Mako explained, and he kept eye contact solely with Beifong as he spoke. If he pretended it was only her in the room, he might be able to present a little more confidence. "I only ever stayed in Fire Fountain City, as far as housing facilities were concerned, but I know that the captive earthbenders there were forced to create a network of tunnels underground that were used to keep low-ranking officers disoriented when it came time to meet with people higher up the chain of command. They were used to store supplies, to connect housing units, to keep His Excellency's location a secret."

            Beifong's face screwed up a little and Mako realized at once what he'd done. He just couldn't help it. When he looked to the others, Tenzin included, they'd all taken a skeptical face as well. Still, Mako kept on, hoping that if he kept pace that he'd overcome the stumble.

            "The captive waterbenders I'm pretty sure were used exclusively for healing. There were some at the Boiling Rock quarantine--that's the only one I ever visited, so I can't say for the others--and there were a lot in Fire Fountain City."

            "What of the waterbenders that couldn't heal?" Izumi asked.

            Mako shrugged. He hadn't considered it before, but he supposed there could only be one explanation. "I'd guess that the females who couldn't heal were used as fodder for the soldiers," he reasoned, "and I'd guess that the men were killed."

            "What makes you say that?" asked the President.

            "Well, that's what they did to the nonbenders," Mako explained, "they killed them. Nonbenders weren't of any use, but they still got picked up in raids by accident. So, they would kill the nonbenders and dispose of them. I don't know what they did with the bodies, but I know that they were killed. It only makes sense that any benders who couldn't be put to use would be killed, too."

            "It makes sense," said Beifong to the others, and Mako was glad for the reprieve. "The person we found in the Upper Ring who we falsely identified as Mako was a nonbender. I'd be willing to guess that the nonbenders were killed, burned, and planted to throw people off of the trail like they did with us. After all, if people have a body to bury they won't be as insistent on pursuing investigations."

            Izumi and Raiko both nodded their agreement, and Mako was relieved again.

            "You said you were named Captain of a quad," the Firelord prompted, "can you explain the structure of command more thoroughly?"

            Mako nodded. "So, a raid happens and the people taken captive are sorted into firebenders and non-firebenders. I already told you what happens to the others so I'm not going to go back into it, but the firebenders are then sorted out again. People who aren't injured or sick are sent directly to the housing facilities for training, and people who are injured or sick are sorted into the quarantines to be healed and rehabilitated. Once they're released, they go into the housing facilities, too, where they're sorted into nine-member squads."

            Mako paused and looked at Tenzin when no one said anything, and Tenzin nodded at him again. For as little talking as Tenzin had done, Mako was still glad he'd agreed to sit in, even if it was just for reassurance.

            "Well, the squads go through pretty intense physical training until the weaker soldiers are weeded out, then they're arranged into quads. Of each quad, one person is selected to become a captain, and I was selected to be captain of my quad."

            "That only accounts for eight people," said Izumi. "What happens to the ninth?"

            Again, Mako hadn't considered it. He'd never thought about the math. Much to his dismay, he had no choice but to offer another pathetic, "I don't know."

            "Go on, then," she prompted.

            "I was named a captain and underwent some additional training to learn how to command, and my understanding is that the existing captains who prove themselves worthy are elevated to commander. The commanders supervise the captains who supervise the quads. I would have to guess that each commander is in charge of a few captains."

            "The numbers don't add up," Raiko interjected. "If captains are named commanders and removed from their groups, what happens to the rest of their squad?"

            "Quad." Mako made the correction almost by instinct, and he regretted it at once. He had to stop himself from seeming so loyal. He had to stop himself from seeming to be so entrenched in the Society's rhetoric. "And I don't know for certain, Mr. President."

            "They're probably killed or captured," Tenzin said, and he'd spoken so suddenly that everyone turned to regard him. "What I've heard so far makes it seem like these _raids_ are very risky from the perspective of the organization. I know as fact that Lin arrested a dozen or more of them in the last series of attacks on Republic City."

            Lin nodded. "Sixteen."

            "So those people don't return to the housing facility," Tenzin continued. "So, the groups who are missing members are likely reassigned or promoted to replace the people who don't return from the raids."

            "It makes sense," Beifong said, and this elicited nods from both Firelord Izumi and President Raiko.

            "You couldn't tell us how many quarantines there were," Raiko said, a little judgmentally and after the slightest silence, "so perhaps you can tell us more about the housing facilities. Do you know how many people were housed in Fire Fountain City?"

            "No, sir. I can make an estimate but I couldn't give you an exact count."

            "Make your estimate, then."

            Mako had already worked out the math. He'd done it on one of his first nights as captain, when he'd gone out to investigate his apartment building and discovered just how many separate dwellings were arranged there. "Each apartment in my block housed two officers, a commander and a subordinate captain. There were I think thirty-six or forty apartments in my building. That's more than a hundred men per officer dormitory. Multiply that hundred by the number of officer dormitories and that's a lot of people. I'd say there were probably four or five buildings in the officer's compound in Fire Fountain City, so that puts us up around four or five hundred already, and that only accounts for those who've been assigned to quads. It doesn't consider people still in training, people in the quarantines, people who've not yet been processed. Even if there are only a few housing facilities, the numbers will add up quick. I'd be willing to bet there are at least two-thousand members of the Society so far, and that's on the low end. If you start counting affiliates like the Triads here in Republic City it goes up still."

            It seemed to Mako that his monologue set the table back a bit, because the lot of them exchanged startled looks that Mako couldn't miss. Beifong even looked at Tenzin, but all Tenzin could do was shrug.

            "Why do you suppose their numbers are so high?" Raiko asked.

            Mako had thought on this, too. This was part of what he'd come up with for his proposed solution to the problem, and he'd been very confident in it as he'd been writing. But now that he was faced with explaining it to Raiko and Izumi, he felt self-conscious. No small part of his explanation placed the blame for the Society's explosive recruitment squarely on Raiko’s shoulders.

            He cleared his throat awkwardly. "Well, I've got ideas," he said slowly, "but nothing I can prove."

            No one said anything when Mako paused, but the looks on their faces said that he needed to go on.

            "Can I speak freely, Mr. President?"

            "Of course."

            "Your registry is a big part of the problem."

            Raiko sat, stone faced. He didn't react to Mako's statement at all, not even a twitch of the eyebrow, and Izumi sat the same way. Beifong, on the other hand, looked surprised, and when Mako glanced again at Tenzin for support even he looked stupefied.

            "I'm not saying that it should take all the blame," Mako backtracked at once, "but I'm saying that it's not helping the problem. See, my understanding is that when this whole thing started, people were kidnapped the same as they are now, and they were forced into service through threats and coercion. If the firebenders that were caught didn't agree to serve, they'd be killed or their families would be threatened. It was high incentive. And for those who were reluctant, myself included, there were conditioning chambers, and those were designed to instill a fear of other benders and increase sympathy for firebenders. I only sat through one session of that before I played it smart and made pretend, but I can only imagine what multiple sessions would do to a person.

            "But that's beside the point," Mako continued. He folded his hands on the table, rested them atop the stack of papers that comprised his notes, and found it strange how little he actually needed to rely on them to answer these questions. Then again, he'd always been overprepared. "Combustion benders were recruited based on quality of life issues, tribal politics, and a general dislike for more advanced society, as I understand the matter. That's how it was in the beginning, for firebenders and combustion benders. I don't imagine the combustion side has changed, but ever since you mandated that firebenders register themselves with the Republic City government, the numbers of new voluntary recruits have gone up. I learned that in my Captain's training. His Excellency confirmed it to my face, said that you were doing his job for him. And do you know why it's working out that way? Because you're forcing people to prove their innocence instead of taking it upon yourself and the government to prove them guilty."

            Mako paused, and he looked around the table again. Beifong's surprise had turned to curiosity, and Tenzin's stupor had turned to appreciation. But then, Tenzin had never really liked Raiko's politics.

            "If you assume that the people in this city don't care what happens to anyone else in the city, which you should, most of the firebending civilians are neutral on the matter of the attacks. Yeah, they might be angry that firebenders are, yet again, being painted as the bad guys, but, when aren't we? That comes with the territory. It's been that way since the Hundred Year War. Your registry, President Raiko, has made the rest of Republic City's residents more afraid of firebenders than they already were, and in the process of doing that it's made the firebending residents even more defensive. People are attacking firebenders as a matter of early defense. I read the newspapers while I was in Zaofu and you can just ask Beifong," Mako gestured emphatically toward Lin, but he didn't look at her. "She'll tell you point blank that hate crimes toward firebenders have increased in the last month and a half or so."

            "He's not wrong," Beifong muttered.

            "And if firebenders are being attacked and discriminated against and generally mistreated by everyone else, why _wouldn't_ they join up? Why wouldn't they want to be a part of something that will make them feel welcome and safe? Yeah, it was horrible at first, but once I was ingrained in the Society's structure it was pretty cushy. Meals on demand, girls whenever you wanted them, a routine to follow, nice apartment, people that actually seemed to _care_. There weren't any surprises. You knew what you got and you got what you earned. People who worked hard were rewarded in proportion with their effort. Who doesn't want that?

            "Look, I'm not a politician and I'm definitely not the world's foremost expert on terrorist organizations, but I'm not stupid and neither are your constituents. If you want to get rid of the Society, you've got to stop feeding them. You've got to stop making them look like the attractive option. You've got to stop playing so directly into their rhetoric because all it's doing is making their pro-firebending propaganda true. Stop with the persecution and the recruitment will slow down. Then it's just a matter of figuring out where the strongholds are and dismantling them."

            Silence.

            Mako looked down. He'd gotten caught up in the talking and now that he'd finished and the quiet had come on, he felt very stupid. Mako the Captain had taken over. He felt afraid. He'd just spoken to the President of the United Republic _and_ the Firelord in what might be considered a disrespectful way. And now that he'd begun reflecting on what he'd said, he realized that he'd definitely not played his cards close to his chest. He'd stuck his neck out, and all that was left to do was wait for one of them to chop off his head.

            But they didn't.

            "The detective is right," said Firelord Izumi. She spoke slowly, sagely, and when Mako looked up to her she'd engaged the President directly. "Perhaps it would be unwise to tear down the registry in full right now, but easing up might be in everyone's best interest."

            Mako couldn't believe what he was hearing. Apparently neither could Raiko. Neither could Lin. But Tenzin still wore a satisfied, slightly smug smirk. He gave Mako the same short nod as he'd done before, and Mako turned his attention back to the table to watch things play out.

            "I can't return home," continued the Firelord, "so I may as well try to do what I can to help out while I'm here. I'd be happy to issue a public statement regarding the matter if you and Chief Beifong would be willing to see to its arrangement. If you'd like someone to be the face for this project, I'd be happy to step forward."

            "That's very generous of you, Firelord Izumi," Raiko stammered, "but I don't think we should--"

            "Well, I do think we should," Izumi said curtly, "and who has more authority to speak on behalf of firebenders than the Firelord?"

            Raiko shut up.

            "Can I count on you to make this right?" asked the Firelord, and when Raiko nodded, she turned to Mako. Her expression changed at once. If she'd been calloused and blunt with the President, she softened for Mako. "You've been of great help, detective," she said generously. "It's good to see that there are some young people out there who are willing to sacrifice for their home."

            "Th... Thank you, ma'am."

            Izumi turned back to the table in general. "We'll have to act quickly to stop the violence against firebenders before the damage is irreparable. I understand that we came in here hoping for specifics and locations so that we could deploy the United Forces and instruct what little army I've got left, but in the absence of those things, working in the city will have to do. Hopefully Chief Beifong and her force will be able to uncover more information that will lead to the strongholds soon. Until then, I've got a statement to begin drafting and, President Raiko, you'll need to make arrangements for its delivery."

            "Of course," Raiko said. Mako could tell that he wasn't pleased, but when _was_ Raiko pleased?

            The Firelord stood and bowed respectfully to the table. "Chief Beifong, Master Tenzin, it's been a pleasure to see you two again. Detective, you can expect to hear from me directly if I find any more questions or need any clarification. Thank you for what you've provided."

            She turned and she left, and when she'd gone it seemed that the air in the room thinned. If there was one thing to be said for Firelord Izumi, she had gravitas. She absolutely knew how to make a statement.

            It took only a few moments for Raiko to stand up, then Tenzin and Lin stood up, and it took a gentle bump of Tenzin's elbow for Mako to know it was time to stand, too. He'd never dealt with this kind of meeting. He didn't know the protocol.

            "Chief, Master Tenzin, detective," Raiko nodded to each of them in turn, and then he left, too.

            Mako felt himself deflating, and as soon as he, Tenzin, and Lin had exited the presidential office, tiredness hit him like a train. He'd not counted on the meeting taking so much out of him, but something about the whole experience had been utterly exhausting.

            "Heck of a job you did in there, kid," Beifong said. "I'm not going to lie, I was nervous when you started on your little rant there."

            "Sorry, Chief."

            "Well, it worked out in the end," Tenzin said in support. Again, Mako was glad he'd come.

            "I wanted to ask you something," Beifong said before Mako had the chance to leave. "I wanted to ask you about that kid, the combustion bending kid who you brought with you when you came to speak with me."

            "Yaozhu?"

            Beifong nodded. "That's the one. You said he was your second in command. You vouched for him. Why didn't you bring him with you when you escaped?"

            "Because he's dead."

            Mako hadn't meant for the statement to come out as it did, all short and hot. But there was nothing to do for it. Just hearing Yaozhu's name made Mako's stomach boil, and if he lingered on the thought for any length of time, the anger started to build.

            "We've got a combustion bender in lockup," Beifong continued. The tone in her voice gave no indication that Mako had offended her. It gave no indication that she'd heard him at all. "It was the man who attacked Bolin, we've had him in lockup ever since but we've never gotten him to talk. I'd like you to have a go at him."

            "What?"

            Beifong shrugged. "He's a member of this stupid Society. So were you. Maybe the common ground will get him to talk."

            "I don't know," Mako said, skeptical. "I wasn't that high of a rank. I don't know what I'd even say."

            "Well, it can't do any harm," Beifong suggested. "I'd like you to meet with him We can play good cop, bad cop if you want, but I'd be willing to stake my life on that guy having information that could be useful for us. He's been too tight-lipped not to."

            "Chief, I'm not sure that I..."

            "Tenzin, what do you think?"

            Mako hoped beyond hope that Tenzin might bail him out, but he nodded instead and Mako's heart fell. "I can't see the harm in trying if Mako is comfortable with it."

            "Consider it your first job back on the force," Beifong said. "I'll see to it that the arrangements are made and I'll contact you with the details."

            "Yes, ma'am," Mako said. He hated the automacity with which he responded.

            "Mako," the shift in Lin's voice caught Mako off guard. She'd adopted a tone he'd not heard in her before, something gentler than command. He looked at her curiously. "It's really good to have you home."


	45. Information

            Mako didn't know what to do with his time. He wasn't used to having any. Removed from the Society, he had no daily training, he had no supervisory responsibilities, and he had no one to report to except for Beifong, and she told him very clearly that she would contact him when she wanted to talk. Away from Zaofu, there was no real personal drama, or at least there was nothing that he had to dip his feet into. Even if he was in Zaofu, for that matter, there'd be little for him to do outside of serving as Korra's shoulder to cry on and searching for Bolin, and Mako figured that he'd do no better a job of those things than the people Su already had working on it.

            He'd spoken to Su briefly after his meeting with the President and the Firelord, and he was certainly glad he'd taken the call in the comfort and privacy of his own apartment. She reported little: Korra was doing well and things looked okay as far as she was concerned. They would need a few more days to make sure of things, and Mako had stopped her explanation there because as far as Mako was concerned, he'd already gotten too much information about Korra's girly bits. As for the Bolin situation, Su reported that no one had found anything, good or bad. She hinted at the possibility of sending out another few parties to head south into the forests or north into the desert, but that either place would likely prove just as fruitless as the others, and that by this point, enough time had passed that Bolin could feasibly be anywhere. Thanks to Kuvira, even the small towns around the Earth Kingdom had easy access to railway stations, and hopping a train would be no issue. For a few seconds, Mako considered having Su ask Korra to attempt to locate him using the vines as she'd once done to locate Prince Wu in Republic City, but then he thought better of it, and he didn't mention it.

            Mako split the rest of his time. Most often he sat in his apartment, listening to police scanners and wondering vaguely why Beifong didn't have him out doing patrols. He understood why she'd hesitate to assign him a more complicated case: He was effectively on-call for President Raiko and Firelord Izumi after their meeting, and within a few days he'd already fielded a number of questions from both of them. Still, it was boring to spend so much of his time cooped up in an apartment with no company except for Pabu, and Pabu reminded Mako too much of Bolin for him to really enjoy it.

            Otherwise, Mako occupied himself as he could at Future Industries, where he'd practically begged Asami for some kind of work to keep his mind off of all the craziness. She'd agreed tentatively--Mako reasoned that his desperation must have shown through all his pleading--and put him to work filing backlogged paperwork. It was entry-level, to be certain, but it definitely kept him busy. It kept his mind off of Bolin and Korra, off of the fact that he was hiding more truths from people who genuinely cared, and he knew how concealing the truth had caused so many problems already.

            A full ten days after he'd returned home, Su contacted him again to let him know that Korra was, for all intents and purposes, in the clear. Su explained that Korra would be returning to Republic City with Oogi soon, and though that certainly took an enormous weight off of Mako's shoulders, it added the weight of telling the truth about what had really happened to Bolin.

            The morning Lin contacted him, Mako felt at the end of his rope and did a poor job of concealing it. She'd done most of the talking, explaining that she would be by in an hour to pick him up and that he should meet her at the curb, and that if he wore his Republic City Police uniform that she would skin him alive. When Mako questioned her on the matter, she snapped, "Because he's not going to talk to the police, idiot."

            Mako couldn't refute her logic on that point, but it got him thinking: What _would_ get this combustion bender to talk? As far as Mako knew, he'd refused to speak both to Korra and to Lin, and though Bolin had managed to get something out of him, he'd only done it by virtue of lavabending. He refused to speak to anyone with any manner of authority, particularly the police, so Mako knew that he needed to present himself not as Mako the Detective but as Mako the Captain. Yet he'd all but lost his Firebending Society uniform between his capture and escape, so there was no real proof that he'd belonged at all.

            He thought on the matter from the moment he left his apartment until Lin parked in front of the single-cell prison where the combustion bender had been housed for weeks now, and though he never asked for Lin's input on the matter, Mako came to a conclusion and decided it would be for the best.

            "I want to go in alone," Mako said as Lin led the way inside, and she rounded on him, confused. "And I don't want him to know you're here, if at all possible."

            "Why?"

            "Because he's not going to talk to the police, idiot." Mako didn't pay attention to the look on Lin's face, though he imagined that it would've been a little funny. Instead, he stepped toward the door and motioned for Lin to open it, and when she did he said, "I'll knock if I want out."

            "Don't take him lightly, Mako," Lin said, and then she closed the door behind him.

            As soon as he was inside, Mako felt very strange and very alone. Beifong had talked briefly about the information she wanted to get out of the combustion bender, but Mako still had no real idea of what he was doing . He wasn’t sure exactly what angle he needed to take. He turned into the room and stopped before he ever took a step.

            Mako wasn’t sure what hit him the hardest: The way the man sat upright and straight-backed in the center of the room, the degree to which he’d been bound and shackled, or the fact that from the moment Mako laid eyes on him, he maintained an iron stare that must have been meant to intimidate him.

            Mako approached.

            “Who are you?” asked the combustion bender.

            Mako didn’t answer. He kept strolling, hands in his pockets, until he was very very close to the combustion man, and then he sat straight on the floor in front of him, knee to knee, and folded his hands in his lap. He was so close that the man could’ve reached out to grab him, but suddenly Mako didn’t care. Now that Mako was close he could see clearly, and he understood at once exactly who this combustion bender was.

            The resemblance was uncanny. Everything from the narrow yellow eyes to the arc of the brow, the shape of his face and the breadth of his shoulders; it all reminded Mako of Yaozhu, and Yaozhu was dead.

For a little while, Mako sat there and watched the combustion man while the combustion man watched him, and for a little while, neither of them spoke. The combustion man’s face changed several times in those minutes, from his initial hard glare to a look of appraisal to a look of curiosity, so that by the time Mako had settled on his angle, the tension seemed to have gone from the room.

            “You asked for my name,” Mako said plainly, with as little artificial authority as he could. “I’m quad captain four zero five.”

            The man’s curiosity deepened, his lips pursed and his eyes narrowed, and for a while longer they sat in silence. Then the combustion bender tilted his head to the side and raised his eyebrow. “I don’t believe you,” he said at length. “You’re too young to be a fourth division.”

Mako could’ve laughed, but didn’t. He should’ve known that the reaction was coming; it seemed to have come every time he introduced himself by number.

            “I’m sure you’ve got a number, too, being that you were deployed,” Mako said, “so why don’t you tell me yours since I told you mine?”

            Narrowed eyes. “No.”

            Mako hadn’t wanted to break out the heavy artillery until later in the talk, until he hit a wall that he knew he’d never overcome, but it seemed that the wall cropped up earlier than he’d expected. It was time to play his hand and hope.

            “You had a brother who was part of the Society,” Mako said, and at the word _brother_ the combustion bender twitched and his posture straightened and his eyes went very, very wide. He looked as though he wanted to say something, but Mako held up his hand gently to silence him. “His name was Yaozhu. Combustion bender, just like you, looked just like you minus twenty pounds of muscle and a few years. Optimistic to a fault and really, really liked tiger sharks. He served with me on my quad. We came to Republic City together on deployment and brought the Triads into His Excellency’s service.”

            “Where were you stationed?”

            “Baihe Island,” Mako said. “Fire Fountain City. I was quarantined at the Boiling Rock before I arrived and for some reason he was on the boat with me. Last time I talked to Yaozhu, he said that you’d been gone for a month or so, so I imagine you shipped out shortly before I got there.”

            The combustion bender looked positively dumbfounded, and he bent low and softened his voice as though sharing some deep secret. “How did you get in here? Did you infiltrate the Republic City Police?”

            “No. I didn’t infiltrate anything. I’m happy to explain myself, but if it’s all the same to you I’d like your number.”

            “Fifteen twelve,” said the man.

            “And your rank?”

            “Fifteenth divisions don’t have ranks. We're independent agents.”

            Mako shrugged. “I’m sorry we have to meet on these terms. I spoke to some of your tribesmen before I was deployed. They seemed like good people, and they missed you. Yaozhu missed you a lot.”

            “Why are you here?”

            With a sigh, Mako reclined a little, leaned back on his arms and looked up at the ceiling, thoughtful. “I’ll be straight with you, fifteen twelve, because I’ve got no reason to lie. I need information. Before I joined the Society, I was a member of the Republic City Police. I was a ranked detective. Well, I suppose I can say that I _am_ a ranked detective, but that doesn’t matter.”

            The second Mako mentioned the Republic City Police, the combustion bender tensed. Mako didn’t particularly care.

            “Point is, I was in Ba Sing Se on official business when I was liberated and drafted into His Excellency’s service. To be truthful, I hated it at first. I rebelled against my own captain until I met Yaozhu and my other quadmates. I made friends with them. I was promoted to lead them, and then we were brought here, as I said, to hustle the Triads. I did my job. But two members of our quad turned on us. To make a long story short, I’m no longer with the Society, and now I’m working to bring them down. I need your help to do that.”

            “Why would I betray His Excellency to help a filthy Republic City Cop? A traitor, at that.”

            “Because His Excellency killed your brother.”

            Mako felt distinctly cruel. It had been wrong to hit this man with such news without any warning, but it needed to be impactful. It needed to knock the wind out of the man’s lungs and set him on the right path, because that piece of information was the only chip Mako had to throw down. So he said the words and he watched the man’s reaction, struck by how similar it was to how he’d reacted himself when Toru told him Bolin was dead. The combustion bender sat straight, looked horribly confused, blinked very hard, and leaned forward again.

            “What?”

            “Your brother is dead,” Mako said again. “Like I said, two members of our quad betrayed us falsely to His Excellency and we were both punished as a result.” He didn’t care that he’d lied about the falsification of Jing and Fa’s claim. He wasn’t looking for points in honesty here; he just needed to convince the man to talk. Besides, Jing and Fa were dead. It wasn't like they'd be coming to hold him accountable. “Guan killed Yaozhu with his bare hands, and he did it right in front of me. Yaozhu was bound in chains the same way you are right now, and Guan strangled him to death with those very chains. And do you know what he did with the body? He threw it on the ground and left it there to rot. Do you know how I know that? Because I _watched_ it all from behind the bars of a prison cell.”

            The combustion bender gaped.

            “It gets better,” Mako said, cynical now. “You’re in here because you attacked an earthbender. You were given his name as a mark and you botched the killing and wound up here, isn’t that right?”

            He nodded.

            “That earthbender was _my_ brother. And you _ruined_ him. So now, as a matter of our involvement with the Society, we’ve both lost our little brothers. We’ve both lost our families. Now, I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty upset about it all. I hate you for what you did to my little brother, it’s absolutely true, but I hate Guan more than I hate you because if it weren’t for him _none_ of this would have happened. Yaozhu would still be alive and Bolin would still be sane.”

            “So what, then? Are you here for revenge?” The combustion bender had put on a stern, no-nonsense tone. Mako imagined it was the same tone that he’d taken with Beifong and Korra and Bolin, but there was a wavering behind it that Mako didn’t miss. There was grief there.

            “In a way, yes,” Mako replied plainly. “Like I said, I’m back on the force now and it’s my job to get as much information as I can about Guan and the Society so that we can send the United Forces in to dismantle them. I want Guan to be captured so that he can answer for everything he’s done. I have to imagine, knowing what he did to Yaozhu, that you want the same thing.”

            When the bender looked at the floor, Mako knew that it was working. He didn't let up.

            "So here's what's going to happen, fifteen twelve, I'm going to go get my boss in here. You already know her, she's the same cranky lady that's been trying to get you to spill your guts for the last however long you've been here. She's going to come in and she's going to ask you questions, and you're going to answer them because both of us want Guan to pay for what he's done. And I'm going to make the deal even better: We're going to _reward_ you. We'll unchain you. We'll provide you furniture and decent meals. We'll make this place a comfortable living space until your information is verified. We'll let you write home."

            The combustion bender tilted his head.

            "I can't say that you'll be set free right this second because that's not how this works. You committed a crime and you were imprisoned for it. But I _can_ make you more comfortable and have your sentence commuted as long as you cooperate. Do you think you can handle that?"

            He nodded.

            "I'll be back."

            Mako stood up and walked to the door, and when he knocked and Beifong opened it, she looked both very confused and very angry. But Mako jerked his head toward the room. She looked over his shoulder, then back at Mako, then over his shoulder again.

"           You got him to talk?" Beifong whispered.

            "No. But he will. You're going to go in and unshackle him. We're going to sit and talk like three human beings and he'll provide you the answers you want. In return, you're going to set him up with some decent furniture, decent food, and the things he needs to write a letter to his family."

            Beifong assumed a look that told Mako she thought he was crazy.

            "Chief, have I ever given you reason not to trust me?"

            "Fair enough."

            Mako escorted Beifong into the room, and again he sat down before the combustion bender. Then, just as Mako had promised, Beifong released the bindings on his hands and his feet, and then, very tentatively, she removed the metal plate from his forehead. The whole while, the combustion bender watched her with a look of appraisal, and when Beifong sat down beside Mako, the two of them matched hateful stares.

            "I've made good on my end," Mako said. "The best I can do for you right now is to have you unchained. Now, let's have some questions."

            Beifong asked them. The combustion bender answered.

            His name was Sheng. He was thirty-two years old. He hailed from a small island in the westernmost Silver Sea, straight south of Sinzong Island. He'd been a member of the society since its inception, and he and many other members of his tribe had joined up because Guan had promised to bring their tiny village into the modern era. He'd brought radios and photographs of all manner of technology, and he promised that it all would be theirs if only they helped him.

            Guan had painted a picture of the world outside that was so skewed Mako could hardly believe what he was hearing. He'd convinced the tribal leaders that benders in the wider world had spent years and years oppressing firebenders. He provided them with reading material and photographs that corroborated the claim, though whether they were real or forged, Sheng couldn't say. All he knew was that they had been convincing, and his tribe had been in sore need of food and supplies, so his people joined without any hesitation.

            He'd been stationed at Fire Fountain City, too, before he'd been deployed, and while he was there he learned of fifteen other bases of operation, most of which were housed somewhere in the Fire Islands but a few of which lay hidden in the nooks and crannies of the Earth Kingdom. When Beifong asked Sheng if he could point them out on a map, Sheng shrugged and said, "Probably."

            There were five quarantines, some more advanced than others, and that was what determined which prisoners went where. The most severely injured were sent to the Boiling Rock. Less injured or simply sick were sent to other quarantines, and Sheng said that he could probably point them out on a map as well. He qualified it by saying he only knew general locations, not exact spots, because he'd never had to go to quarantine himself and had never bothered to ask.

They learned more about the hierarchy of the Society, the way Guan selected his advisors and the way he kept everyone on edge at all times. They learned what happened to firebenders who weren’t deemed strong enough, to earthbenders and waterbenders who didn’t fit the bill. They learned why the Society never held captive any airbenders and worked so hard to avoid capturing them. They learned that there was, indeed, a certain deliberateness to the way captives were taken, including nonbenders. It was exactly as Toru had once said: Everyone had a place in His Excellency’s society.

            Mako could never say that the tone between the three of them had come anywhere near cordial, but by the time Beifong had finished her long list of questions and Sheng had provided answers to them all, there had developed a modicum of understanding. Beifong never once asked what Mako had done to change Sheng’s mind, and Sheng never once mentioned the flagrant disrespect with which he’d treated every person Beifong had ever sent in to question him before. It seemed, as far as Mako was concerned, that the three of them were now bound together by a common need to bring down Guan’s Society.

            After it was over, Beifong thanked Sheng again and stood, and Mako followed her after offering him a very respectful bow, and while Sheng didn’t offer anything back to Beifong, he dipped his chin at Mako and said flatly, “Captain.”

            “I’ll see to it that our agreement holds,” Mako said then. “Give us a day or so to get the arrangements made and have everything sent out here.”

            Sheng nodded.

            “Thank you again for the information,” Mako said, “and I’m sorry about Yaozhu. I really am. He was a good kid. I’ll make sure to have regular reports sent your way regarding the progress of the operation.”

            Again, Sheng nodded, and because he had nothing left to say, Mako followed Beifong out of the cell. They stayed in quiet for a while after they’d gone, even after they’d started the long drive home. Mako busied himself looking through the mountain of notes Lin had taken, and he swelled with pride. It was his negotiating that had provided this much information, and between it, what Mako had given himself, and what Korra and the girls had brought back from the Boiling Rock, there was no doubt in his mind that a plan could now be made.

            “All right, kid, what did you do?”

            Mako looked up from Lin’s notes, and though Lin’s eyes remained fixed ahead on the road, her brows had peaked. She’d asked the question right out of the blue.

            “I followed protocol.”

            “What’s that supposed to mean?”

            “Do you remember when I told you that I was assigned a number when I was promoted? Well, I gave him that number, then he gave me his number.”

            “And that was all it took? A _number_?”

            “Well, no.” Mako paused and looked down at the notebook in his lap. He’d never really looked at Lin’s handwriting before, but now his eyes were on it, he recognized its character and felt distinctly bad that his own handwriting had always been so sloppy. He hoped it hadn’t made _him_ look sloppy. “Like I said earlier, I promised him that we’d provide him a bed and some furniture, basic things that anyone would expect in a typical jail cell. Told him we’d let him send a letter home. And, see, Chief,” he started again, very slowly, “that guy in there was Yaozhu’s brother.”

            Beifong remained quiet. When Mako looked at her to read her expression there was nothing there. She sat as iron-faced and impassive as she always did, and it made Mako sigh.

            “I told him what happened to Yaozhu,” Mako explained quietly, a little bit sadly. “I explained how Guan strangled him to death and left him to rot in the tunnels below Fire Fountain City. And I told him that Bolin was my brother, and that it was His Excellency’s fault and the Society’s fault that both of our brothers were...”

            “You know, I knew that kid looked familiar,” Beifong interrupted. Mako was glad for it. His throat had started getting tight when he thought about Bolin, and that made it hard to speak. “I don’t know if I should say it was lucky that he was the one who attacked Bolin, but it was certainly a nice coincidence.”

            “I suppose,” Mako replied, deadpan.

            “Regardless, you earned us some invaluable information. You should be proud of yourself. That’s the stuff Deputies are made of.”

            “Thanks, Chief.”

            The silence fell again, and this time when Mako looked at Beifong he caught her glancing at him sidelong. Her brow had furrowed this time in the expression that Mako recognized as Lin Beifong’s special brand of concern.

            “Is something wrong, Chief?”

            “I could ask you the same thing.”

            Mako didn’t say anything. There was too much on his mind, and none of it was relevant to the moment. His foremost worry was the Bolin and Korra situation. The notion that Bolin had been missing for almost two weeks weighed heavily on him, and Mako hadn't decided how he was going to tell everyone that Bolin was gone. He wasn't sure how he'd admit to lying. He wasn't sure how he'd negate the damage.

            “What’s eating you?”

            He sighed. Mako had always relied on Lin for advice before; maybe it was time to rely on her again.

            “Listen,” Mako started, and he realized how stupid that word had been to start because it was quite clear that Lin was already listening, “I lied to you.”

            “On which count?”

            “My brother and Korra,” Mako said.

            “Figured it was something like that,” Lin said. There was no alarm in her voice at all, no concern of any kind. She spoke straight and even, just like the Chief of Police on business. “Well, you’d better come out with it before you snap.”

            “Bolin went missing,” Mako explained. He gazed out the window to avoid the look he knew Lin would shoot him, and he plopped his chin on his palm. “The morning we came back to Republic City, Bolin went missing. We couldn’t find him anywhere in Zaofu city limits, not even with the help of Su’s guard, and she even sent search parties out into the swamp and into the mountains. No one found anything, even with airships.”

            Beifong remained silent.

            “I've talked to her and Opal a few times since then. There’s still been no sign of him,” Mako continued. “Su said she might send another few search parties into the desert and into the forests down south, but it didn’t seem like she was convinced that it would help.”

            “Would depend on how long he’d been gone, I’d think,” Lin reasoned. “If he’d been gone for too long he could’ve--”

            “Hopped a train, I know,” Mako said.

            “I assume Korra stayed to help look.”

            Mako wasn’t going to argue. That was the story Su had told, and that was the story he was going to stick with. It was nobody’s business but Korra’s who she told what happened between her and Bolin. He kept his mouth shut.

            “Well, here’s the deal: You and I will go back to headquarters and try to make some sense of all this information. We’ll get some maps sent out to the combustion bender so that he can mark locations for the quarantines and the housing facilities, and we’ll come up with a plan of attack to bring these lunatics down. And by that, I mean we’ll _start_ coming up with one. No way you and I will be able to cover everything by ourselves, and we’ll have to keep Izumi and Raiko well-informed besides.”

            “Understood.”

            Lin sighed and drew Mako’s attention. Her expression had softened. “I promise, kid, we’re going to set all this right. You leave the hard stuff to me and keep your head in the game. Think you can do that?”

            “Yes, ma’am.”

            And Lin kept her word.

            Immediately upon their return to the precinct, Lin gathered all the paperwork she’d put together on the Society, threw it on Mako’s desk, and instructed him to sort it by topic so that it would be easier to go through later. Then she disappeared into her office. Mako worked, certainly, but he kept a close eye on her office door and kept waiting for Lin to come back out. By the time she actually reentered the room, Mako had long since given up waiting on her and had devoted all of his attention to his actual work. He’d become so engrossed in it that he didn’t realize she’d come out until she’d plopped down in the chair on the opposite side of his desk.

            “Okay,” Lin said, to business at once, “let’s cut straight to the chase. I’ve been on the phone with Su, Tenzin, and Asami, in that order. Su explained the whole thing to me, how Bolin left and how Korra stayed in Zaofu to look for him, so I’m all caught up there.”

            Mako worked hard to keep his face straight. He wasn’t exactly surprised that Su had kept to her lie about Korra, and it made him feel better about having lied himself. They could straighten out their stories later.

            “She also explained to me that they’ve had zero luck on the search no matter where they looked. Su even took a couple days to go find mom in the swamp to see if maybe he went looking for her, but it was no good. Mom hadn’t seen him, either. So, Su and I came up with a plan.”

            “A plan,” Mako repeated in prompt. “What kind of plan?”

            “I’ll give you all the details, but before I do, I need you to understand that you’re not a part of it. And you’re not going to _be_ a part of it, either. I need you here and I need you to be completely focused. You understand?”

            Mako nodded.

            “Well, I spoke to Tenzin and Asami, as I said, and they’re going to work out some long-term search options. Right now, Asami is setting up Future Industries to run on its own for a while, and as soon as that’s done she’s going to hop a train back down to Zaofu. She and Opal are going to head way down south to Kyoshi Island and farther, and they’re going to work their way through the towns along the coast. I talked to Tenzin and filled him on the whole situation, and he’s agreed to have Jinora and Ikki head north.”

            “And how exactly are they going to find anything?”

            Beifong shrugged. “Tenzin said that the kids could handle the details. I heard Jinora say something about getting a photograph, so I’d imagine they’re going to do a good old fashioned manhunt, just like they did to find Korra.”

            “Makes sense.”

            “Now, we’re in this for the long haul,” Beifong said, her tone slightly darker now, “because as much as I say to the contrary, your brother isn’t stupid. If he doesn’t want to be found he’s not going to be found, let’s be honest. The girls will go out for a week or so, then everyone will report back here. Once we’ve discussed where we’ve searched and what leads we’ve found, they’ll head back out again. If we work together and keep to a strategy, it shouldn’t take too long to find him.”

            Mako certainly hoped so.

            “If we get leads or start running dry, we can reevaluate the plan. In the meantime, you and Korra are going to be working full-time on this case.” Beifong poked her finger purposefully into Mako’s stack of paperwork. “I’ve got maps and a temporary cot en route to Sheng and when he gets back to us we’ll have plenty enough information to send the United Forces out. We’ve got enough right now to set up recon and intelligence points to keep an eye on things and try to warn against future attacks. At the very least, we can reduce the number of successful raids in the immediate future, and further down the line we can start sending operatives to the housing and quarantine facilities to shut them down. If we’re really lucky, we can work on finding their suppliers and either shut them down or use them to our advantage.”

            “Don’t you think all of that is a little optimistic?”

            Beifong shrugged. “Optimistic, maybe, but it’s definitely doable.”

            Again, Mako nodded, then he looked back down to his paperwork. Lin had been remarkably busy in her office over the last few hours. When she set her mind to it, she could get a ridiculous amount of work done.

            “So we’re set then,” Lin suggested, “don’t you think?”

            Mako agreed. They _were_ set, and if he could leave the search for Bolin in such capable hands as Jinora, Ikki, Asami, and Opal, he could focus on his own work. And maybe, if it was needed, he’d be able to help Korra get back to normal, too.

 


	46. The Rumble

            Bolin knew before he ever left Zaofu that he was going to be alone, but he never realized just how lonely it would be. He'd walked out of the city confident that he wouldn't be followed, that he could find his own path, and that maybe someday he would return to Zaofu or Republic City a whole man again. But the longer he walked and the more he thought on the matter, the more reality settled in until at last Bolin decided that he wouldn't return. He decided that he _couldn't_ return.

            In the weeks since the collapse he'd made misstep after misstep in the name of recovery. He'd hurt people and acted without regard for his own well-being or the well-being of those around him. He'd thought that he needed to take bold steps to figure out who he was, because taking things slow always seemed to set him back. Since the beginning of it all, he knew that he wasn't the same Bolin as he used to be, but no matter how hard he tried he could never figure out who or what he had become in the wake of the collapse.

            Now, away from Zaofu and away from the people he loved, Bolin found certainty. The truth was that he'd become a monster. And he hadn't just become a _monster_ ; he'd become an _abomination_ , a subhuman horror capable of little more than ruining lives and destroying friendships and murdering innocent people. He'd burned down everything he'd ever built trying to find some elusive answer or magical cure-all and he'd come out with nothing to show for it but ashes. And he'd done it all for what? For a little independence? For some illusion of control?

            It was, in a macabre sort of way, a little funny how it all worked out in the end. He'd spent so long believing that he hated himself and believing that he'd hurt the people he loved that he never stopped to imagine what it would feel like to truly hate himself. He never stopped to think about how empty he'd feel when he _really_ hurt the ones he'd loved. Now he knew. Now he understood, and that strange enlightenment opened his mind to whole new truths that he never could have admitted to himself before.

            Once upon a time not long ago, Bolin had entertained thoughts of self-harm and suicide not because he hated himself, but because he felt entitled to the escape. He understood now that he'd wanted out because he'd suffered for so long, because he'd failed in every attempt he'd made to explain himself and heal, and he believed that he deserved better. Yet somewhere in the back of his broken mind there must have been some fragment of the optimism he'd once held to so tightly, because he'd managed to stay alive despite his best efforts, which, in hindsight, hadn't been all that good to begin with.

            When death proved too elusive for him, he'd begun entertaining thoughts of leaving Zaofu outright, and Bolin remembered the first conversation he'd had with Korra on the matter. The memory hurt. Still, the thought of leaving had stuck with him. It had permeated everything after the fiasco in Fire Fountain City so that running away was the only thing that he could think about. He'd believed so fervently that he had to leave to save everyone else that he hadn't thought about what he would do once he was gone.

            Things were different now. Things were _real_ , and all he'd felt before had been mere child's play. The feelings he'd had in Republic City and in Zaofu and on Baihe Island had come and gone in great swelling waves that ebbed and flowed, but what he'd felt since leaving Zaofu hadn't. What he felt now didn't succumb to the void and couldn't be bested by what little reason he was capable of applying to it. In much the same way that all the feelings before had eventually collapsed into a single black hole of panic, his feelings now fell into a single black hole of self-loathing that seemed never to be satisfied. He was ashamed. He was embarrassed. He was depressed. And more than anything, Bolin felt angry with himself for letting things get so out of hand.

            Bolin walked without much idea of where he would go or what he would do. He decided before he ever set foot out of Zaofu that he would go south toward the coast, wandering through the small towns trying to find whatever answers he could. And he meant to keep to that plan, but whenever he pulled out the map he'd annotated and the notes he'd scribbled about his intended path, he couldn't read his writing and couldn't interpret the strange squiggling characters that he'd etched onto the page.

            Worse still was that Bolin simply couldn't force himself to think about anything beyond how horrible he felt, so all he could do was go. It didn't take much thought to just _go_ : No one would search for him south, anyway. So he kept the mountains surrounding the Si Wong Desert on his left side, and he didn't stop moving.

            His progress was understandably slow. Bolin hadn't thought his plan through enough to have procured food or any kind of portable shelter. He'd brought only the couple changes of clothes from his drawers, his map, and his book of incomprehensible notes, and for the first day or two after his departure from Zaofu, that was enough. He'd stopped to drink from the cleaner streams he happened across and ignored his body's calls for rest and food, and each night when he found a likely tree trunk to lean against, he slept so hard that he might've been dead.

            Had Bolin been more aware, he might've been happy for his exhaustion in the evenings and his single-mindedness during the days because it kept his mind away from reflecting on the specifics of his time in Zaofu, on his breakup with Opal and his frightening Asami and his fighting with Mako and whatever it had been that he'd done with Korra, because there had been nothing _loving_ about it and Bolin wasn't sure what to call it otherwise. Once in a while as he wandered along through the trailless forests of the southwestern Earth Nation, his mind drifted away from his general unhappiness toward those memories and stole his concentration away from the walking, but he worked hard to avoid lingering on it. There would be time to think later. Now he had to walk and focus on figuring out how to survive.

            It took several days for Bolin to decide that he'd have to start trying to eat again, so he set about gathering what plants he recognized and camped in the evenings with a palm's worth of tree nuts and a few overripe berries. He spent most of those nights being violently sick, not because the food he'd foraged had been bad--he'd made certain to collect only what he could identify with certainty--but because something in the back of his mind kept telling him that he couldn't eat and forced it all back out. It was the same strange subconscious something that had convinced him that he couldn't eat before, and after the sixth night's fit of vomiting he decided on his first priority: He had to eat and he had to keep it down, and he needed to figure out how to do it.

            Bolin kept walking, spending his days thinking and watching the trees pass by and listening to the strange forest creatures squawking and clicking and chirping, and the farther south he went the more successful his foraging became. By the twelfth day he managed to keep down his dinner: two thumb-sized bird eggs he'd scrounged from a low-hanging branch, and he'd been so desperately hungry on that evening he'd cracked them open on the spot and drank them raw from the shell. He found it strange that they stayed down considering the difficulty he'd had forcing himself to swallow them, but they provided a satisfying weight in his stomach and an odd fullness that convinced him that maybe they weren't such an awful option after all.

            Had Bolin been capable of seeing himself from another perspective, he might've recognized this as the gradual but inevitable strengthening of his body, and he might've understood that all the walking and working and attempts at eating had begun affecting him. As the days passed and his body grew stronger, he spent less of his concentration on putting one foot in front of the other. Eventually Bolin spent most of his waking hours berating himself for being such an idiot and ruining his life so brashly. He spent a great deal of his time wallowing in his shame.

            Bolin paused as often as he could to wash up in the streams and ponds from which he drank. When he stopped, he stared at himself in the water's surface, and though he noted a distinct change in the way he looked, he couldn't have identified it as positive if he tried because all he saw was a broken human being: The abomination. Still, the abomination's color seemed different and its shoulders seemed broader. Eventually Bolin found that he could set up the whole of his meager camp without feeling weary or nursing the pain in his ribs, and he somehow knew he was getting stronger.

            It was a full twenty days before the forest gave way to civilization, and it came so suddenly that when he first laid his eyes on the electric lights, Bolin didn't know what they were. It wasn't until he'd crept up to the gates of the city that he recognized it for what it was, and that realization struck Bolin so hard that he stood rooted to the spot, staring at the buildings and the paved roads and the street lamps until he managed to produce his now tattered map and squint uselessly at the symbols.

            Then, no wiser as to where he was at, he entered the great city of Gaoling.

           

            It took several days for Bolin to settle into a routine in the city, but once he found his rhythm the place seemed largely agreeable. On the whole, it afforded him an enormous degree of anonymity such that he could pilfer his raw eggs from the farmer's markets twice a day and frequent the same few public restrooms to wash up. In the interim, he wandered around seeing the sights, admiring the luxurious homes of Gaoling's richer residents, and sitting in public parks trying to sort out the jumble that had become his brain.

            Overall, there was too much time and not enough to occupy it, and if he hadn't thought much about the world and his place in it before he'd left Zaofu, it seemed all he was capable of doing now. He found himself passing hours and hours watching people walk about on their business and thinking about how strange it was that so many of them bore tiny characteristics that reminded him so strongly of home.

            Inevitably, his mind returned to the night he'd spent with Korra and how he'd left her without explanation or good-bye. He remembered how he'd promised her that they would discuss their tryst once they woke, but then he'd run away. And at the same time he'd denied Korra the opportunity to process exactly what had happened and what it meant, he'd denied himself that opportunity, too.

            On the whole, the night had been enjoyable if unexpected. He really hadn't gone to her room meaning to throw her on the bed, just as he'd explained to Korra after the fact, but he hadn't gone there with any purer intent, either. He'd meant to manipulate her with words, to confuse her as he'd confused her before and create uncertainty in her that would cause her to question her feelings toward him and, if things worked out the way he wanted, abandon them. But then curiosity had taken hold: Bolin had wondered for weeks what he'd missed in the hospital room the night of the collapse, and when he'd taken the initiative to find out, a kind of autopilot took over.

            He knew better than that. It hadn't been _autopilot_ because that sort of automacity was reserved for early mornings without enough rest, when he had to walk in a half-sleep daze around the apartment to feed Pabu and clothe himself and make breakfast in time to be out the door for whatever engagement he'd arranged for the day. What had happened that night with Korra had been a deep-seated, long dormant desire rearing its ugly, persistent head. Once upon a time when he was sixteen years old he hadn't known what to do with those complicated feelings because despite all the grief Mako used to give him about _fan girls in the arena_ , he'd never been all that experienced. Twenty-year-old Bolin couldn't boast that same innocence. Twenty-year-old Bolin knew _exactly_ what to do with the feelings, and he'd acted on them with Korra in the same way he acted on them with Opal, and though the mechanics remained the same, the feelings involved could not have been more different.

            No matter how hard he racked his brain, Bolin couldn't think of a single bad experience with Opal. Certainly in the beginning they'd fumbled around and been awkward with each other, but in the end it always seemed to work out for the best. And on the rare occasion that things _hadn't_ worked out, they'd at least come out with a laugh or a moment of connection and learning about one another. They'd always come out a little bit closer and a little bit stronger no matter what ridiculous situations they found themselves in.

            Korra was different, and it wasn't because she was still fresh in his mind. When he was with Opal, Bolin felt things both physical and emotional, felt closeness and wholeness and _love_ , but it hadn't been that way with Korra. With Korra, Bolin had felt _nothing_. There hadn't been any connection. There hadn't been a trace of love. She'd served as little more than a warm body, but he would never have guessed it would be that way. If there had been a single truth going into the experience it was that Bolin did love Korra, but it took making one of the biggest mistakes of his life to make him understand that it was a vastly different love than what he held for Opal.

            The lack of feeling hadn't been the worst part of it, either. The worst part had been entirely his fault, because after weeks of malnourishment and sleeplessness and general sickness, he'd been exhausted five minutes in. He recalled having been unusually sweaty and embarrassingly breathless, and all of that went without considering how difficult it had been for him to finish. Whenever he thought on the matter, he recalled it being a lackluster performance in every way on his end, and he wasn't really sure if he'd finished at all. He'd just been too tired.

            He wondered how Korra had dealt with the aftermath. Probably not well, if Bolin knew her, because the times Korra dealt rationally with issues of the heart were few and far between. She lacked the experience to deal with those issues alone, and that made Bolin feel guiltier still. It reaffirmed in the back of his mind that he'd made the right choice to leave because staying there would have forced the two of them to face the horrible truth, and his presence would be too painful no matter how much time passed.

            Once again, full of shame and anger, Bolin resolved to stay away forever.

            Bolin didn't know how long he'd been in Gaoling exploring its many vast neighborhoods, but one day he found himself in an area he'd not yet visited, a slightly seedy place that reminded him vaguely of the back alleys in Republic City. The streets had a very _Dragon Flats Borough_ feel to them: potholes and loose gravel, tattered signs and a general dirtiness that pervaded everything. As a matter of course, even this neighborhood had its fair share of merchants and street shows and outdoor bazaars, and Bolin passed some time casing the fruit and vegetable stands for items he might steal and try to eat. But he never had the chance to lift anything.

            "You!"

            Bolin and the half-dozen people beside him at the vegetable stand turned around with varying degrees of surprise. A large man stood in the middle of the road, and if Bolin was to judge by his well-tailored clothes and expensive-looking hat, he didn't live in the neighborhood.

            "You! Young man!"

            Bolin pointed stupidly at himself as if to ask, "Me?" He was the only _young man_ in the vicinity.

            "Yes, you!" The robust man glided toward Bolin like he was walking on air, and as soon as he'd come close enough he extended a manicured hand in greeting. "The name's Kazuo, it's a pleasure to meet you..." the man trailed off and cocked his head as if in prompt. It didn't take Bolin long to understand.

            "Ping."

            He wasn't sure why that was the name that had come out of his mouth because he'd only ever known one Ping, and it hadn't been a Ping worth impersonating. All Bolin knew was that this man had no business knowing his real name, and if things turned south he could easily fade back into the crowd with his identity protected.

            "It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Ping. How'd you like to hear about an opportunity?"

            "An opportunity?"

            Before Bolin could disengage, Kazuo hooked his arm around Bolin's shoulders and was leading him away from the most promising vegetable stand he'd seen in two days. He supposed it didn't matter anyway. Whatever he lifted from the stand he'd probably throw up in the end, and it wasn't like he couldn't head back there once this strange person was finished talking. Besides, it didn't seem that Kazuo was one to give up easily.

            Kazuo didn't lead Bolin too far, much to Bolin's relief, but when he finally stopped walking he rounded with a coy expression that put Bolin on the defensive. Then he set to work, and Bolin recognized the oily fast talk of a businessman out for blood.

            "You've heard of the Earth Rumble?"

            "No." It wasn't a lie. Bolin hadn't heard anything about any kind of rumble, though if he'd been paying more attention or been able to read the various colorful posters around town he might have. "I haven't."

            "Ah," Kazuo seemed undeterred by Bolin's deadpan delivery, "well do I have news for you, buddy. I'm in charge of booking for our humble venue, and you caught my eye from a mile away."

            "I'm flattered."

            Kazuo laughed heartily and slapped Bolin on the back, but Bolin stood impassive. He might not have qualified himself as curious, but he had no real reason to make a break for it, either. A cynical curiosity kept him standing there trying to read Kazuo's face, but he couldn't discern anything.

            "You're a strapping young man," Kazuo continued, the grease in his voice thick enough now that Bolin knew beyond doubt that the man was an experienced bookie. In no world could Bolin be described as _strapping_ , besides. "And if I judge you by your clothes you look to be from Zaofu, right? You're a little far from home as I figure, and I thought you might be interested in stepping into the ring to get your hands on some spending cash."

            "You still haven't told me what the rumble is, exactly."

            "Of course. The Earth Rumble used to be a once-a-year attraction for us here in Gaoling. It was a big deal, pulled in spectators and participants from as far away as Ba Sing Se. But it wasn't a big money maker the rest of the year, so my boss decided to expand a bit. Now it's a nightly event. Brings in enormous crowds."

            "You _still_ haven't told me what it is."

            "You're a sharp young man, Ping. Very sharp. It's a fighting ring, to be plain. Consider it wrestling, boxing, martial arts, whatever you want, but it pays big if you lose and even bigger if you win. My job is to drum up contenders, and we've got a few special nights coming up. Wild card night is on Thursday and I figure you might want a piece of the pie."

            Bolin looked back to the vegetable stand in contemplation. Now Kazuo had explained it plainly, Bolin realized that he _had_ heard of this event. Korra had recounted less than fondly how she had participated for a few matches in her post-poison travels and come out with just enough cash for some food and a bed for a couple nights. She must not have won.

            "We've got special events coming up, see, and I figure since you came out of Zaofu you've got to know how to fight. I've never seen a person come out of that city without a little something up their sleeve, right, Ping?" Kazuo elbowed Bolin gently in the arm, but Bolin didn't acknowledge him.

            The prospect was oddly tempting on multiple levels. Even a paltry participation payout would prevent him from having to pilfer goods from vendors around town, and purchasing his goods legitimately might prove useful in keeping people off his back. More than anything, Bolin wanted to stay a gray face to the police, but more than that, he wanted to do things honestly. And the money wasn't the most interesting prospect, either, because for some reason whenever Bolin thought about the idea of fighting and taking a few hits, something in him stirred.

            It was the same stirring he'd felt during his fight with Mako, when so many emotions had built up for so long and every punch he threw at his brother brought more and more relief. That fight had been an odd release for him, and in the time between when he'd lost and when the strange voices had begun arguing in his head, he'd been exhausted but clear-minded enough to understand his place in the world. Maybe this _rumble_ would prove just as effective.

            "How much money are we talking?" Bolin asked at length, in a quiet, toneless voice that gave nothing away. "Win or lose, what would I earn?" 

            "Losers net fifty yuans. Bracket winners take fifteen percent of the night's income."

            "Fifteen percent?" Bolin balked, and he couldn't help but stare wide eyed at Kazuo. "What's the usual haul?"

            Kazuo shrugged. "Couple thousand at a full house, but you've got to take out the loser payouts. You could pull in two or three hundred yuans a bout if you put on a real good show."

            Bolin stared hard at Kazuo for a long moment he spent trying futilely to do the math in his head. For the life of him, he couldn't figure fifteen percent of a couple thousand, but he understood the number to be more than generous. Even the fifty yuan participation prize would be enough to keep him on his feet, clothed, and fed on what meager meals he took in. He might even be able to upgrade to turtle-duck eggs as his primary nutrition. What did he have to lose?

            "All right," Bolin said finally, "I'm in."

            "Wonderful!" Kazuo cried in unrestrained glee. He reached into his coat and produced a small card, which he flamboyantly presented. Bolin took it and looked at it. "Wild card night is in two days at the arena, like I said. The address is here on this card, and you'll use it to let the gate boy know you're a fighter. Consider it your admission to the bracket."

            "What time?" Bolin asked. He was certain this information was on the card, but no matter how hard he squinted at it he couldn't read the characters.

            "Brackets open at six and close at a quarter till seven. First fight is at seven o'clock sharp."

            "I'll be there."

            Bolin spent his two days taking careful inventory of himself. It had been the first time since he'd set out from Zaofu that he'd cared enough to pay attention to his body, and he made a number of discoveries that surprised him: The bruise on his ribs was entirely gone. More, when he poked at the area around where the bruise had once been, there came only a hint of discomfort, and he managed at one point to gather enough courage to thump at his chest with some significant strength, and though it ached a little bit, it hadn't taken the air out of his lungs as it might once have done.

            On top of that, the ugly scabs on his arm and leg where he'd skidded down the stone corridor in Fire Fountain City had healed away so that only a jagged pink line remained. Bolin was certain that it would leave some manner of scar, but all the same he was satisfied with the progress.

            For the first time, Bolin considered how long it had been since he'd been on Baihe Island, how long it'd been since he'd left Zaofu, and for once he considered that the injuries that had made his life so difficult might have healed over. All that seemed to remain was his lack of stamina and his lack of real motivation to improve himself.

            By the time the night of the rumble came around, the only thing Bolin felt uncertain of was his shoulder, because there was simply no way for him to effectively test its strength. Still, he'd had no trouble with it since leaving Zaofu, but he'd not strained it, either.

            Bolin stopped four times to ask for directions to the arena, and he arrived at half past six to a gigantic square building which, except for its size and a simple sign above its door, seemed utterly unremarkable. He flashed the card Kazuo had given him to a man in similarly lavish clothes, and that man pointed him down a corridor and into another room. This was the staging area, Bolin understood, because on the wall opposite the door--beside an exit marked _arena_ \--a large bracket loomed.

            Bolin had been staring at the bracket so intently that he hadn't noticed the doorman following behind, so when the man said, "Name?" Bolin jumped.

            "Ping," Bolin replied, startled, and then he watched as the unfazed man scribbled some characters on the bracket that must have been his name.

            The doorman instructed Bolin to sit until he heard his name, so Bolin sat, waited, and listened. Beyond the arena door he could hear the cacophonous shouts and yells of the crowd he knew must have gathered, and the longer he sat the louder things became. At last the crowd went quiet and Bolin heard a single booming voice echo out, a voice that reminded him of Shiro Shinobi back home but whose timbre was a little lower and a lot gruffer, but the door and the lingering noise of the crowd drowned out what he was saying.

            Just as Kazuo promised, the first match began at seven o'clock. The arena door opened and the doorman from earlier stepped in, called the two names that must have been first on the bracket, and then the two men disappeared. The crowd roared. The announcer cried out in surprise and excitement and shock. Then the noise swelled again, and a few moments later only one of the men came back through the arena door, and that man's name advanced on the bracket.

            Bolin waited for a long time, and as he sat on the bench listening to the crowd and watching the number of men in the room thin out, he began second guessing himself. He wondered what the heck he was even doing there, why he'd stopped in Gaoling to begin with, what he was hoping to prove by involving himself in this senseless violence. But before he could act on his sudden change of heart, the doorman called his name--Ping's name--and Bolin followed his opponent into the arena.

            It was staggering. The way Korra had described this place made it out to be a hole in the wall, but everything that Bolin saw indicated the opposite. He couldn't see for the bright lights, but he knew just by the look of the ring alone that no expense had been spared on this place. Then it struck Bolin as very strange that something called the _Earth Rumble_ would boast such a pristine, untouched stone arena after so many matches. Certainly if there had been earthbenders pitted against each other, there'd be some holes in the ground.

            Bolin's nervousness multiplied in a way he hadn't felt in weeks, until it bordered on panic and he found his heart beating fast and his breath coming short. The horrible feeling welled up in him that said he shouldn't be there, but he couldn't hope to explain why.

            Bolin stared across the way at his opponent, an older man who looked to be about Tenzin's age. He seemed solidly built, well-muscled for a man with so many years behind him, and the narrowness of his dark yellow eyes and the stony expression on his face told Bolin that he'd seen a few fights in his day. That truth only made the panicking worse, and Bolin had actually opened his mouth to forfeit, but then a bell sounded and he had no choice but to engage.

            The old man's reaction time was stunning: by the time Bolin registered the bell had sounded, his opponent was halfway across the ring, his fist cocked for a devastating hook that Bolin dodged by instinct alone, and once that instinct set in, it eclipsed all of the panic Bolin felt so that everything seemed the same as it had on Baihe Island, where every move he made was drawn from the primitive need to preserve himself.

            For a while, Bolin fell to the defensive. It was all he could do to keep his feet against the old man's powerful punches, dodging and blocking as desperately as he could, and for a while it was enough to make the match appear to be even. It wasn't, and Bolin knew that well enough, but something about the way he moved must have masked his terror because no one called it off and the old man ramped up his attacks.

            He started firebending.

            The moment Bolin saw the stance, his heart froze and his breath caught in his throat. Everything about the sudden shift in the old man's offense caught him off guard, because Bolin had believed this to be the _Earth Rumble_ , not the _Firebending Rumble_ , and even if he'd expected some kind of bending to happen eventually he never would have guessed that it would be fire flying at him instead of rocks. He wasn't ready for it, and not solely because he'd not been expecting it. It hit him suddenly that _wild card night_ at the Earth Rumble must have meant _anything except earth_.

            The old man punched out, his fiery fist flying forward so fast that Bolin could scarcely follow the motion. He threw himself sideways, stepping out of the way of the blow through luck alone, and before Bolin could put a halt to his pathetic scrambling, the old man struck again. This time, a horizontal pillar of fire shot out from a lightning-quick palm thrust, and though it had been literal weeks since the last time he'd earthbent, Bolin knew what he had to do.

            As fast as he could, Bolin slid his left foot back and grounded himself to the earth in a sloppy excuse for a horse stance, and he threw his arms up to block the fire strike. He'd meant to draw earth from the ground, to produce the same rock wall he'd produced on a moment's notice a million times before, but his panic blocked the earth from coming and the fire connected solidly with Bolin's forearms, and then he was on his back skidding toward the edge of the arena.

            It was Baihe Island all over again.

            He'd been struck by the combustion bolt.

            He'd slid down the jagged stone corridor and felt the rocks tearing away the flesh of his arm and his leg and his foot.

            He'd come to a squishy halt in the remains of a boy named Yaozhu, and when Bolin remembered the fluids and the gelatinous flesh, he could smell and taste the fermentation of the body.

            He'd crushed them. He'd killed them. He'd smashed them into pulp.

            It was too much.

            Bolin's back connected with the arena wall and he lay there for a second, stunned and terrified and willing himself to keep his mind about him. His forearms hurt terribly now beneath the metal bracers Su had given him, and he felt a bruise welling up on his hip, but still he didn't move. If he lost control now he was liable to crush this old man the same way as he'd done to the firebenders in that corridor. If he allowed instinct and panic to take over, there would be no coming back.

            When Bolin pushed himself up and looked back toward his opponent, he felt very glad for the etiquette practiced in most fighting arenas. His opponent had backed off to his side of the ring, still in his offensive stance, but there was no energy coiled in his arms or his waist. There was no indication that he was going to strike at all.

            Frantic, Bolin looked around. If he could spot the doorman he could stop the fight. If he could find Kazuo, he could explain that he'd been expecting a fight against earthbenders. But the lights were too bright and the crowd's roaring made Bolin's head spin, so that all he could do was frantically cry out, "Stop! Stop!" and hope that someone would hear.

            No one seemed to hear at all.

            Back on his feet, Bolin presented a fair target again, so the old man attacked again. Two lunging strides covered half the distance between them, and the panic set in again. Bolin squinted his eyes closed and threw his hands up in what he hoped would be an effective defensive maneuver, and he cried at the top of his voice, "Stop! I can't bend!"

            And the old man stopped. And the crowd went very quiet. And the bell that had sounded to begin his match rang out again.

            "Hey, ref, what kind of game are you running here? This ain't a fair fight!"

            Bolin peeked sheepishly through the crook of his elbow to see the old man approaching what must have been the commentator's box, and he let his arms drop listlessly to his sides.

            "Kid, get over here."

            Bolin did as he was told.

            Face to face with the judge's box, Bolin felt very sheepish and very stupid, and he wasn't even certain what he would say. He shouldn't have come out here in the first place, and he _wouldn't_ have come out had he known he was going to be pitted against a firebender. It was just too hard to predict what his reaction would be.

            "You heard what he said," the old man continued in his tirade and he gestured toward Bolin. "He can't bend. So why's he in the arena tonight?"

            "Must've been an oversight," said one of the men in the box who presently had begun rifling through a short stack of papers before producing one from the middle of the pile and looking directly at Bolin. "Your name's Ping, right?"

            Bolin nodded.

            "Yeah," said the man in the booth, and he turned the paper around so that both the old man and Bolin could see it. Bolin recognized it as a very rudimentary registration form that someone--Kazuo--must have filled out for him prior to the match. "Says here he's a metalbender. You're not a metalbender, kid?"

            "No," Bolin replied. "I can't."

            "Well, we'll have to get the boss caught up on this." The man in the box tapped his stack of papers on the desk before him and sat them down, then placed Bolin's page on top of it all. "Sorry you were registered incorrectly, kid. I'll tell you what, though, we'll give old Koga here a bye for this round and I'll have you re-registered for tomorrow night."

            Bolin stammered. He wasn't sure that he _wanted_ to be registered again. This had been a horrible enough experience by itself.

            The man in the box seemed to think he understood Bolin's hesitation, because he clarified before Bolin could make a word. "Tomorrow night we've got a small bracket of nonbenders. I'll personally make sure you're put on the list so you can have a fair shot. Seem fair?"

            Bolin wasn't sure what to say. All the panic in him had suddenly changed to surprise, because he'd never imagined that anyone would assume him to be a nonbender.

            "Take the deal, kid. Otherwise you're out your participation fee and you'll leave this place a laughingstock," said the old man, apparently named Koga.

            With one last dubious look, Bolin nodded his agreement to the man in the box. Then, before Bolin knew what had happened, he and the old man were escorted out of the arena while the commentator hopped back on the microphone to explain the mistake in registration and that, "Our newest contender, Ping, will be back tomorrow night to compete in the nonbender's division."

            Bolin wasn't sure why he followed Koga for as long as he did, but the old man led him through the waiting room with the bracket still displayed on the wall and into a back hallway, until he reached an unmarked wooden door. Koga pounded on it none too kindly, and as he began the second round of knocking, Kazuo answered the door and he didn't look happy.

            "What do you want, old timer?"

            "You screwed up this kid's entry."

            "No I didn't."

            "You had him listed as a metalbender and put him in the wild card bracket. Kid stopped our match and said he couldn't bend."

            Kazuo looked skeptically between Koga and Bolin a couple of times before he scratched at his chin. "You're not a metalbender?"

            "No, sir," Bolin replied.

            "See, I assumed you were since you came out of Zaofu. Not many earthbenders from that place who can't metalbend, besides, and look at your getup with all that metal on your arms."

            "I'm not from Zaofu," Bolin explained carefully. "I was just staying there for a while."

            "Ah. Well, my mistake then, kid. I assume Koga got you taken care of?"

            "Yes, sir."

            "Very good. Then we'll see you back here tomorrow night for the nonbender rumble."

            Again, Bolin didn't have time to protest. Kazuo closed the door in his face and when Bolin looked to Koga for support, the old man just shrugged.

            "Same time tomorrow night," Koga said. "Show up and I'll make sure you're taken care of."

            "How?"

            "I'm a regular here. It's good money, and I know the ropes. It's not often we get new faces so it's important we make the right impression, especially for our nonbending contenders."

            Again, Bolin wanted to argue, but he didn't. Then, before he knew it, Koga escorted him to the rear door of the arena and tossed him twenty yuans and a friendly, old mannish smile.

            "Treat yourself to a nice room or some dinner or something, kid. There's an inn down the road. You're in for a hard time tomorrow."

            And then Bolin was alone.

            His head swam all the way to the hotel, and even after he'd tossed the twenty yuans down on the counter and settled in to his room, he still didn't understand exactly what had happened. He hadn't _lied_ , Bolin thought, because he definitely wasn't a metalbender. But in his panic he'd been unable to pull any earth from the ground, and he'd tried to make that fact clear. They must have assumed, "I can't bend," meant, "I'm a nonbender," and that's where the mix-up came in.

            The longer Bolin stared at the ceiling and thought about it, the less convinced he was that this was a bad thing. He'd spent so long being afraid of other people bending at him and being afraid of what he was capable of doing with his own bending when he lost control that perhaps a life without it would simply be easier. it would be safer, at any rate, because if he didn't use his earthbending he wouldn't be able to crush anyone else, and if he didn't use his lavabending he'd never kill them as he had done in Fire Fountain City. Maybe Ping the nonbender was who he was meant to be.

            He fell asleep that night thinking that if nothing else, being Ping the nonbender would be an interesting change of perspective.

            At six thirty the following evening, Bolin found himself back at the door of the arena, and this time when the doorman opened the way Bolin was admitted immediately. The old firebender Koga met him in the waiting room, pointed out Ping's name on the bracket, and then sat with him on the benches while he waited.

            "So what exactly brought you to the fighting pit?" Koga asked after the first match began. "You don't seem like a fighter."

            Bolin shrugged. "Just wandering," he said truthfully. "I don't really have a lot to do."

            "You don't think it's dangerous for a nonbender kid like you to be wandering around right now?"

            "Why would it be?"

            "You've been off grid for a while, haven't you, Ping?" Koga scratched at the stubble on his chin and reclined on the bench, then folded his hands behind his head. "Lots of stuff been happening around here with this firebending terrorist society thing. We didn't think it would come this far south, but it turns out they did! Weirdest thing is that down here the attacks aren't the same as they were up north, at least not that I read about in the papers. Seems like down here they're just blowing things up without considering taking prisoners. Up north, they're still on the old routine."

            "Oh."

            "Oh well," Koga sighed. "Shouldn't matter for you nonbenders, anyway. If you keep your head down you ought to be fine."

            "I hope so."

            "Well, I'm going to go watch the matches. Good luck in yours. I'll look forward to actually seeing you fight."

            "Thanks."

            Koga left out the rear door and Bolin dropped his chin onto his hand. He still wasn't sure what he was doing there, but he kept clinging to the vague thought he'd had when he'd first accepted Kazuo's offer: When he'd fought with Mako it had been a good way to take out his stress. It had left him feeling better, at least for a few minutes, so maybe the fighting now would provide the same outlet. And at the very least, it would net him some much needed money, and that could never be a bad thing. 

            Bolin was called in the middle of the bracket this time, and he and his opponent could at one point have been an even match. The man that settled across from him seemed, by looks alone, to have been of an age with Bolin. He was certainly the same height, and his physique matched what Bolin remembered in himself once upon a time. This was a person who took very good care of his body, who likely knew how to fight, and who wouldn't fall lightly.

            Then again, Bolin had an ace up his sleeve. Sure, he was fighting in the nonbending division and everyone here believed that he couldn't bend, but that didn't mean that he couldn't use his knowledge of bending to his advantage. With his mastery of earthbending techniques he had a strong foundation so that even out of his prime, Bolin wouldn't likely be knocked down in a grapple. Even without moving the earth, the strikes and kicks that generally brought it forth would prove powerful when pitted against someone inexperienced in blocking them. And then there was his fundamental knowledge of waterbending, and if he managed to mix its fluidity with the solidity of his earthbending, Bolin knew he could win.

            The last thought he had before the bell rang was: Do it for the money.

            And he did.

            He'd not realized it, but his pre-match thinking had given him a modicum of confidence, and that tiny bit was more than he'd housed in months. It coursed through him and as his body moved his body remembered, and the strikes he threw landed with precision.

            His opponent made the first move and proved quicker than Bolin could have imagined. He assumed the stance of a boxer and sidled across the arena, his arms up and hands protecting his face, and as soon as he was within arm's reach he struck out with a right jab that should have caught Bolin straight in the face. But Bolin ducked beneath the punch and swung his leg around low, the same as he might once have done to spread a line of lava out before him, and his opponent fell to the ground with a heavy thud and a breathless grunt.

            At once, Bolin gained his feet and hopped back a step or two, then he watched his opponent stand. The look on the young man's face made it seem like Bolin had caused him some embarrassment because he looked angry, and when he came on next it seemed that he was out for the kill.

            Bolin caught punches and blocked knees and kicks with his forearms. He stood strong as stone when his opponent grappled him and tried to throw him to the floor. Bolin knew too much about his center of balance and the way his body moved under stress, had too much experience staying grounded at all costs, so that there was virtually nothing the other could do to get him off his feet.

            He snuck in blows here and there, powerful hooks with his left and gentler prods with the right--he didn't want to blow his shoulder out--but the majority of the shots he landed were kicks and knees and swipes of the foot against which his opponent had clearly never fought.

            Bolin might have said that the match lasted a while, because when his opponent finally stayed on the ground, too exhausted to get back up, Bolin himself was breathless and jelly-legged. But then he looked at the clock: Three minutes, fifty-five seconds.

            A man who must have been the commentator jumped into the ring and flew to Bolin's side with a grin so wide it looked almost comical. He raised his microphone to his mouth, grasped Bolin's right hand in his left, and thrust it into the air.

            "The winner of our match, Ping!"

            The crowd roared the same as it had roared at the end of each prior match, and the swelling of pride in Bolin's chest eclipsed the discomfort in his shoulder.

            Maybe this wouldn't be so bad.

            Bolin fought twice more that same night, and each time he stepped back into the arena the confidence swelled up in his chest and warmed him through the middle, so that when the fighting began he felt more ready to move and more alert than he'd felt since before the collapse. In a cynical kind of way, he found the whole thing to be fun.

            His second opponent was a man who looked to be in his thirties with graying hair and a long, lanky frame that suggested a life of sedentary work opposed to a life of fighting. It took twenty seconds before he fell to the ground in an unconscious heap, because Bolin had expected him to dodge a punch that he apparently hadn't seen coming.

            Bolin felt a little bad about it.

            His final opponent proved only slightly more difficult. He was the only person who managed to land a solid blow that caught Bolin squarely in the ribs and knocked him summarily from his feet. Lying on his back on the ground, Bolin was certain that he was going to lose, but whether by luck or coincidence or his opponent's own hubris, Bolin managed to return the strike in spades. He'd meant to kick up to his feet as he might have done before the collapse, but as he thrust his feet outward his opponent must have been rushing in to finish the job, because both of Bolin's boots plowed straight into the man's sternum, and he dropped in a heap on the spot.

            Bolin felt even worse about that.

            At length he stood, breathless and groping at the dull ache that had sprung up around his ribs, and he watched his opponent writhe around on the ground until a couple of waterbenders came out to retrieve him. Then Bolin was alone again until the commentator rushed back out to throw his hand in the air for a third time, and the crowd roared louder than ever.

            It took him a while to realize that he'd won.

            "Didn't think you were going to put on much of a show," said Kazuo while he counted out Bolin's payment. Bolin had been sitting in his office for twenty minutes waiting for the numbers to come in, and almost all of that time had been spent in silence. He'd not expected the commentary.

            "I thought you said I was _strapping_."

            "Hey, I have to get people in the door somehow." Kazuo tapped the stack of bills on his desk and handed them over. "Sometimes a little flattery goes a long way. But I've got to say, you fought like a natural. From what I saw you looked like a regular old earthbender."

            Bolin cleared his throat and collected his money. "My brother," he lied. "My brother was an earthbender. He taught me how to fight."

            "Ah, too bad," Kazuo said. "I know how it feels to be the kid who got shafted on the bending."

            Bolin didn't respond. He didn't want to give himself away.

            "Well, there's one hundred and eighty yuans there. Smaller crowd means a smaller payout, but that's what we get. I'd love to see you back here again, Ping. The crowd liked you."

            Looking at the stack of bills in his hand, Bolin thought it might be nice to be seen there again, too. "When?"

            "Next nonbender night is in four days."

            "I'll be here."

            With his earnings, Bolin booked for a week the cheap hotel Koga's twenty yuans had netted him the night prior and purchased two dozen turtleduck eggs with plenty left to spare. As he dared, he snuck in a few extra vegetables from the reputable vendors around the arena, and by the time the next nonbender night rolled around he'd had three full days of decent meals with no upchucking between.

            He felt good.

            Over the next weeks Bolin participated regularly in the Earth Rumble's nonbending division and became something of a spectacle as his body healed and his strength multiplied. He didn't fight in every rumble, but whenever he showed his face he won, and by the fourth week he'd netted a comfortable chunk of wealth and, perhaps more importantly, had finally begun to recognize his progress. The time Bolin spent as Ping the nonbender had managed to do more good for his mind and body than anything he'd done in Zaofu, because there was something in the change of identity that felt freeing. He could do what he wanted without fear of hurting someone--a punch to the gut was less destructive than a chunk of rock to the face--and for a while he forgot why he'd left and how badly he'd felt about himself on the road.

            And then the arena blew up.

            In the midst of the final round of his fifth bracket, an explosion tore through the arena's west wall that buried an entire grandstand of spectators and set fire to the banners. For those initial moments, Bolin stood in the center of the ring beside his equally dumbfounded opponent until at last the screaming and shrieking and low grumble of spreading flames cut through his stupor, and the panic took hold entirely.

            As spectators and participants rushed all about, a second explosion struck the roof, and enormous chunks of concrete and shards of glass and metal rained down everywhere. For the first time since he'd departed from Zaofu, Bolin engaged his earthbending to chuck a falling stone aside, preventing it from crushing both him and his opponent. Then his opponent bolted, and Bolin was left to stare, his instinct crushed by the terror the scene brought back.

            The fire was everywhere. Red-uniformed people began rushing into what remained of the stands, but what was their purpose Bolin couldn't see. Fireballs shot in all directions and more, smaller explosions cut off the exits and trapped the innocent bystanders who'd started trying to flee.

            Then Bolin was back in the tunnels beneath Fire Fountain City, staring horrified at the piles of bodies that littered the floors of the corridors and underground chambers. He was back there staring horrified at the bloodstained stones that he'd used to crush the firebenders who'd been attacking. The smell of blood overwhelmed him with every breath he took and the sounds of screaming distorted into the mortified, anguished crying of that young firebending soldier upon whom he'd dropped the ceiling, whose head he'd smashed into the ground and whose still living body he'd smothered with lava.

            Bolin ran. He ran as fast as his feet would carry him away from the chaos. He ran past people who'd been flattened by the falling debris, winding through the rubbled grandstands that had once seated hundreds of people, and whenever someone in the throes of death caught his attention he squinted his eyes closed and pressed on. When he came across a barrier, whether a fallen stone or an intact wall, he ripped the earth away to clear a path and sprinted ahead, completely oblivious to the fact that he'd collected a mass of people following behind to safety. He ran until his lungs burned as badly as his eyes, until the sound of fire became muffled by the building's exterior and the frigid night air hit him full in the face.

            He stopped for a few desperate heartbeats to watch the terror unfolding. Hundreds upon hundreds of people were fleeing the arena the same as he'd done, were rushing out into the streets of Gaoling without stopping for anything, and as all of it happened the arena continued to crumble beneath explosive blasts that shook the ground like earthquakes and sent fire and ash shooting into the sky.

            It was Fire Fountain City all over again. The sky now was illuminated red the same way it had been that horrible night. He remembered the ocean of lava he'd opened beneath the buildings, the way the people fell to the molten rock and screamed as the flames spread over their clothes, the way they dropped into lifeless heaps and lay there among the flows until the gases in their bodies expanded and their flesh burst from the pressure.

            He retched, and then he ran.


	47. The River

            Bolin had always known that he wouldn't be able to heal without the help of the people he loved. It had been one of the first conclusions he'd drawn after waking from the collapse, when he'd gotten enough tiny pieces of his mind back to think, and it stayed with him. When every ounce of his self-confidence wavered, he’d relied on the others. When he struggled with remembering what kind of person he was, he’d relied on them, too. Every time Bolin felt unable to rely on himself, he'd had someone to seek for help and guidance he could never have given to himself.

            On some deep, subconscious level Bolin knew that the idea of leaning on people who used to lean on him terrified him. No one had ever seen him so weak and pitiful. Before the collapse he'd always been the solid foundation upon which Team Avatar stood because no matter what strange drama developed between them all, Bolin could diffuse the tension. He'd always been the person who helped with issues that people couldn't take to anyone else. He'd always been good at making people feel better. Even in situations where he couldn't offer legitimate advice, he'd been a shoulder to cry on or a stone to sound off of, a crass and poorly timed joke when things seemed particularly bleak.

            After the collapse, all of that changed. Somewhere in the rubble of that building in downtown Republic City rested his empathy and his humor, his level-headedness and his ability to cope, and Bolin knew now that he would never get it back, help or not. There might have been a chance before, back when he'd been at home and under the watchful eyes of the people who loved him. But then he'd left. He'd run away from everyone he cared about and in doing so had abandoned all hope of ever finding those things again.

            Bolin had always known that he wouldn't be able to heal without the help of the people he loved, but he'd left them all behind.

            For the first time since leaving Zaofu Bolin regretted his decision. In his planning, he'd believed that he would be able to handle himself but in reality, he'd failed miserably. He thought he'd be able to stand against whatever terrible things presented themselves in the world beyond Zaofu's protective borders, but he hadn't. The chaos followed him as it always seemed to do, and now innocent people were dead and all he'd been able to do was run. All he ever seemed able to do was run.

            After escaping from Gaoling's Earth Rumble Arena, Bolin ran until he fainted. On the ground, unconscious and exhausted, he dreamed about the lava ocean and the firebenders who he'd heartlessly killed. He dreamed about the horrible things he'd done to Korra and to Opal and to Asami. He dreamed about his fight with Mako. He dreamed about the explosion in Gaoling and how similar it must have been to the explosion in Ba Sing Se, and how both of them must have been similar to the explosions that had made the building fall. And then he'd waked on a hard patch of grassless dirt all sweat-soaked and freezing, surrounded by trees he didn't remember and clueless as to where he was. He'd abandoned everything he had in Gaoling when he'd mindlessly fled, and every time he caught a glimpse of his reflection in his tattered, dirt-stained greens, the regret swelled. Every time he noticed the metal adorning his wrists, he remembered Su’s hospitality and wanted to go home.

            Bolin couldn't go home and he knew it. He'd burned every bridge he'd ever built so that no one would bother looking for him. No one would want to look for a person who'd hurt them as badly as Bolin had done. He'd made certain of it.

            So, Bolin walked on alone.

            For the first few days after the disaster in Gaoling, Bolin wandered in a weird, paranoid haze through the woods, following the Nan Shan River to what must have been the northeast. He didn't much care which way he was going. His mind was too full, and it didn't seem to matter where he went, anyway. He wandered through tiny villages that had sprung up along the watersides and snatched what little food he thought he'd be able to eat from the shops he found along the way. He slept against trees when the night caught him in the wilderness and in alleys behind trash cans when it found him in town. Without a home or a destination, he was free to go where he wanted.

            As it always did, the haze faded so that Bolin recognized the thinning of the southern Earth Nation's overgrown forests, the increasing number of towns and villages along his path. He recognized when people stared at him and understood the expressions on their faces to reflect anything from disgust to curiosity to surprise, though he wasn't sure why anyone would be surprised to see a person wandering through. He'd always heard of people following the rivers.

            It took him a while to realize that the strange looks didn't come because he was wandering upriver. It wasn't because he was a lone traveler or even because he looked like he'd bathed in a tub of dirt. No, the people eyed him strangely because of the clothes he was wearing and because his perpetual state of filth didn't match. His clothes tied him too closely to Zaofu. They tied him too closely to the Beifongs and the money from which they came, because who else in the south dressed in the Metal Clan's distinctive greens and blacks? Who else in the south adorned their wardrobes with gleaming metal accents?

            No one did.

Bolin didn't know how long it was before the idea came to him, but something clicked which said at the first opportunity he needed to ditch his clothes in favor of something that fit in more naturally with the region. If he did that, he'd stop drawing attention. If he did that, he could blend in and disappear.

            Opportunity presented itself in a modestly sized, nameless village in the shadow of one of the larger mountain peaks south of the Si Wong Desert, where Bolin happened across a late-season market where tradesmen and farmers appeared to be hawking the last of their seasonal merchandise. He'd been casing a food stand rich with fish and eggs, both items he'd found himself able to stomach since he'd set out, and had been waiting for an opening when he heard someone yelling in the distance about, "The finest clothes in Yang Province." And while it wouldn't take care of his bleak food situation, it piqued his curiosity enough to draw him near.

            Bolin vowed to return to the food stand later, perhaps when its owner was taking a break or looking away, and he followed the voice until he came across its source: A group of four separate stands, all of whose attendants appeared to be selling clothes and goods that seemed appropriate for travelers, and to Bolin's delight, the items on display looked to be plain and unobtrusive.

            There was a certain part of him that wanted to do things the right way: To walk up to the stand and see if they had anything he could use, and then offer some kind of trade for whatever he found. But he couldn't bring himself to do it. He didn't have anything of value to trade, and whenever he contemplated approaching his stomach turned in knots and he felt a little sick. The sensation was stranger still because these people looked friendly, by all accounts. They greeted every person that stopped by their stands warmly and chatted them up like a long-time friend.

            He couldn't make himself approach. He didn't want to impose himself on someone else if he could help it.

            In his time alone, Bolin had been forced to remember how he and Mako had once done things while living on the streets. He remembered how he'd been the one who found promising targets, how he'd sat around and watched the people coming and going so that he could convey the information to Mako. He'd done all of the scouting because he'd been small and no one had paid attention to him: Mako had done all the hard work like figuring out what time to make their move and how to get in and out without consequence. Either way, their exploits had been mostly successful, even if they didn't provide much in the way of reward. And if they could do that at eight and ten years old, why couldn't Bolin do it by himself at twenty?

            Bolin settled on the matter and marked his target: An old, frail-looking man peddling cloth merchandise that looked to be for farming and general labor, and he set to watching. He came and went through the rest of the day, passed in and out of the crowds while keeping his eyes open, and he did so with such focus that he forgot his hunger entirely. Even after the sun began to set and the merchants started tearing down their stands for the night, Bolin watched, and he watched carefully.

            Then his mark set off for the night, a heavy bag slung over his shoulder, and Bolin followed.

            Bolin had tailed people before. He'd done it recently, perhaps even routinely since meeting Korra. Sometimes in the course of their adventuring, it had been called for. He understood how to keep his distance, how to remain close enough to maintain line of sight but far enough to elicit no suspicion from onlookers. He walked quietly but not awkwardly, not unnaturally, because he'd found the locals to be surprisingly good at spotting a person who appeared to be out of place or acting strangely. But Bolin didn't act strangely and didn't draw attention, and eventually he found himself across the street from the old man's shop, watching him unload his bag and putz around the building, closing it up for the night.

            It took a long time for the lights to go out, for shadows to stop passing over the windows, and even when they did, Bolin kept waiting. He waited until he felt certain the old man had cleared out, and then he made his move.

            Bolin ducked into a space between two buildings farther down the street and he rounded behind the row and entered a dark alley with meticulously placed bins and boxes. He crept back the way he'd come, counting the buildings and paying close attention to the lights in each window as he passed beneath them. If there existed the slightest chance that he would be caught, Bolin was going to cut and run. If he was caught, people wouldn't be as kind as they'd been when he was a child. If he was caught, he'd be arrested, and if he was arrested he'd probably be jailed, and as much as Bolin wasn't sure where he was going to go or what he was going to do with the rest of his life, prison wasn't ever a part of the plan.

            No threat came, and Bolin found himself eyeing the rear of the old man's building dutifully before he ever proceeded. Mako had always said that most places could be entered easily if a person paid enough attention. Most places had some kind of vulnerability: People forgot to lock doors all the time and many places of business boasted vents and chutes in and out of their kitchens and storerooms. If a person was willing to get dirty, things could be easy. If a person was willing to get dirty, things could be profitable.

            Bolin didn't want to earthbend. Mako had always discouraged him from earthbending his way into buildings because it created too much noise and too often left evidence that they'd been there. Very few earthbenders indeed could rend a hole in the ground or open a wall without leaving some evidence that they'd done it, even if that evidence was minute. But it went beyond that, too. Bolin didn't want to earthbend because _he didn't want to earthbend_ , because earthbending hadn't brought him anything but disaster. Every time he earthbent, something went wrong or someone ended up hurt, and half the time the earthbending gave way to panic which gave way to lavabending which had already proven more devastating than anything else he had ever done in his life. He didn't want to earthbend because he didn't want to be an earthbender, and that thought tugged persistently at the back of his mind. It distracted him.

            Things worked out serendipitously: Almost as soon as Bolin began his examination of the building he noticed the open windows, and they weren't just opened a crack, they were wide and inviting. It was too good to be true, except that the building remained dark and no matter how hard Bolin strained to hear noises coming from the alleyway or from inside the building, there was nothing but silence. No matter how hard he strained to feel the vibrations in the earth, he could feel nothing. He listened for a long time, crouched below the most easily accessible opening, and he felt warm air rushing out from the building with the odd smell of clean linen and fresh bread, and even if he'd wanted to sit there listening and smelling forever, he couldn't make himself stay. His nerves were beginning to creep up on him, so he vaulted the window and landed quietly inside. 

            After a time spent standing in the dim light cast by the window, Bolin moved into the shop. As he'd expected, this was a clothing store, though it didn't resemble Republic City's clothing stores in any way. Where in the city the clothes hung on carefully posed mannequins complete with hats and jewelry, what was modeled here had been thrown on old-fashioned, headless wooden models that could've been a hundred years old. There was little fanfare about it all: No flashy accessories, no jewelry, no pretty gloves or frills of any kind. The side of the store to Bolin's left boasted women's work clothes, a small assortment of bags and clutches--all of which seemed to have been woven from thick, natural fibers--and a few pairs of simple shoes with wide frames and soft-looking soles. To the right side seemed to be the men's clothes, and they weren't merchandised at all. A few stacks of shirts had been arranged haphazardly on a waist-high table, and it could have been the darkness, but Bolin could've sworn that they were all some variation of dull, drab brown. There were a few pairs of trousers, a few pairs of heavy work boots and some lighter shoes beside them, and a single pair of overalls hung pinned to a rack against the wall.

            As quietly as he could, Bolin crept toward the table and set about digging through the piles. He was meticulous in the matter. He was very careful to avoid disturbing things that didn't need disturbing, and if he pulled an article out of a pile that didn't suit him--everything seemed to be entirely too large--he folded it delicately and replaced it as he'd found it.

            As he searched, it struck Bolin how weird he felt about the whole situation. This wasn't stealing as he'd done it before, not when he was a child and not since leaving Zaofu. Since then, he'd taken only what he needed to survive, only bits of food that probably wouldn't have been missed anyway, and never to excess. He never took anything that wasn't vital for his survival. But this wasn't vital. He didn't need new clothes to stay alive; he needed new clothes to ditch his old life and stop being associated with Zaofu. He needed new clothes to distance himself from the horrible memories that welled up in him whenever he saw his reflection. He was here because he needed to feel different, and the first step to feeling different was looking different.

            It bothered him profoundly, how he was standing there in the middle of a shop in the dead of night picking through clothes like he was at the Little Ba Sing Se Fashion Mall. It bothered him profoundly that he was stealing to find some change in him when he knew beyond doubt that a different wardrobe wouldn't make him feel different about himself. Sure, it might make other people see him differently but what did that matter in the end? What did it matter if he didn't see _himself_ differently, if he continued to allow the past to control him and kept plowing down the same self-destructive, self-hating road?

            Bolin sighed. He didn't even know what he was doing anymore.

            With a gentle thump, Bolin's hands dropped to the table before him, still clutching the latest poorly sized shirt, and he hung his head. He stared at his hands lying flat atop the clothing and racked his brain: Was this really the right thing to do? When had he gotten so soft about stealing things? Why did he want to change himself? Why didn't he want to be _Bolin?_ Why had that idea come to him in Gaoling, and why had he acted on it?

            A cold, sharp object poked him hard between the shoulders and pressed heavy against his spine, and Bolin froze.

            "Son, you've got about two seconds before I drop you."

            Bolin felt as though his heart had stopped beating dead in his chest. How long had he been standing there staring into the dark? How much noise had he made when he'd entered? How long had the old man been watching him? What was going to happen now?

            Bolin's mind came back, and when it did he wanted to laugh at the absurdity. He hadn't simply been _discovered_ , he'd been caught off guard. Bolin had become so used to feeling people's movement through the earth's vibrations that he'd just assumed that he would feel someone approaching. He'd felt people approaching time after time in Zaofu and in Fire Fountain City. But then it hit him that he'd not earthbent since he'd fled Gaoling, and even then, it was the only time he'd done so since leaving Zaofu. How long had he been gone? Weeks? Had he fallen so out of touch with the earth that he'd lost the ability to _feel_?

            Bolin didn't cry and Bolin didn't laugh. He just stood there with his head low, his palms on the table, and he waited for the point to pierce his skin and for the life to drain away.

            "What's the matter, boy, you scared?"

            "No."

            "You armed?"

            "No."

            "Get on the ground."

            The point pressing into Bolin's back fell away, and Bolin sat. He dropped right beside the table, cross legged with his hands on the floor, and almost as soon as he'd settled he felt cold, hard earth enveloping his feet and hands, gluing him to the earth so he couldn't move even if he wanted to. Of course, he could earthbend himself out, but the thought never crossed his mind.

            A few moments later the lights came on, and Bolin looked about. The shop looked utterly different now, it looked inviting where in the dark it had seemed plain and sad. In the light, Bolin could see the character of the room. There was dust on the walls and dents in the furniture, scratches on the table and scuffs on the floor. But that lack of care was more than made up for by the merchandise, by the workmanship and the modeling of the clothes. He'd never have noticed these things in the dark, but now that he was paying attention, Bolin knew: He'd been stealing from the wrong shop. This was a shop whose owner cared perhaps a little too much.

            "Well, here we are," said the old man from across the room. He eyed Bolin skeptically, stared out through bright green eyes that had begun to sink into his skull with age. There was a friendliness in those eyes that Bolin couldn't miss even through his stern expression, and there was nothing about the man that suggested he was truly angry. In fact, if Bolin was to judge by the man's posture alone, he seemed to be more curious than offended. "What are you doing in my shop at this hour?"

            "I figured it was obvious," Bolin replied, deadpan. He dropped his eyes to the floor and examined the earth encasing his hands.

            "You're not much of a thief, are you?" asked the old man sardonically. "Not a good one, anyway. I watched you all afternoon, eyeing me like you did. I knew you were going to follow me. Left the windows open so you wouldn't bust my door in. Shame on you for being so predictable."

            Bolin shrugged again. He hated doing it, but he wasn't sure what to say: On the one hand, he'd been stealing his whole life. He'd been stealing since he fled from Gaoling. But he'd never really considered himself a _thief_ , per se, because he'd only ever done what he had to do to survive.

            "What's your name, kid?"

            "Bolin."

            The automacity with which Bolin said his own name caught him off guard, and that startled him. He'd meant to identify himself as _Ping_ the same way he'd done in Gaoling, but somehow, he'd forgotten how little he wanted to be himself. He'd been thinking too hard about his current predicament to keep it up. Bolin wondered where his resolve had gone.

            "All right, Bolin, give me one good reason why I shouldn't walk you down the road to our deputy."

            Bolin didn't have a good reason, and he was too caught up in his own head to make up a lie on the spot. He was still hung up on the fact that he'd given his real name, because giving out his real name meant that people could find him if they were so inclined, and the last thing Bolin wanted was for people to find him.

            But eventually Bolin settled: There was no sense lying to this person. He'd been caught fair and square, and it seemed at this point that lying would only land him farther in trouble.

            "Look," Bolin said with an enormous, defeated sigh, "I didn't mean any harm. I'm coming out of Gaoling. There was an--"

            "I know what happened in Gaoling."

            "Well, I bolted. I got so scared that I just bolted, and I ended up leaving all of my things behind. I don't have any clothes or food, I don't have any money to _buy_ those things. I haven't had a bath in almost a week."

            "I know. I can smell you."

            The old man's attitude was beginning to set Bolin on edge. It wasn't so much that he'd been looking for sympathy because he never looked for sympathy, but he might have expected something besides the venomous attitude he was getting.

            "So, let me get this straight," said the old man, his voice still hard-edged and low, "you're a refugee out of Gaoling. I believe that much just by looking at you. What's catching me off guard is that you mysteriously forgot your cash and clothes when you left."

            "I panicked."

            The old man looked extremely skeptical now.

            "I've got a problem."

            "Well, you're going to have more than one if you're not careful."

            Suddenly Bolin felt the earth recede from his hands, fall away from his feet, but he kept sitting there all impassive. He folded his hands in his lap and watched the old man approach.

            "So, you came in here because you needed clothes?"

            Bolin nodded.

            "I'll give you some, but there's terms."

            "What terms?"

            "That shirt you've got on right now looks like it's made from some high-quality material. You've put it through the ringer, to be sure, but I bet I can put the scraps to use."

            "Fine. You can have it."

            "I'm not finished."

            "What else?"

            "Those metal things you got on your wrists. I can melt them down and have them cast into fastenings and buttons that'll net a good price. I'd say those clothes make an even trade for what I can give you."

            Bolin looked down, feeling distinctly uncertain.

            "But that doesn't account for the fact that you broke into my shop. You've got to make up for that, too."

            "How?"

            "You're going to get the heck out of my town and you're not going to come here again."

            Bolin nodded. "I can do that."

            "All right then."

            The man moved around his shop slowly, examining his garments before plucking them from their piles and draping them over his arm, and he hummed a little bit as he moved. This struck Bolin as odd and made his stomach lurch a bit, made the anxiety well back up in him because somehow the idea of parting with the clothes Su had made specially for him made him sad. As much as he'd always hated them, these clothes held memories, and now that the prospect of being rid of them had become a very possible reality, he wasn't sure that he wanted them gone.

            "I want to keep the metal," Bolin said after a few minutes sitting there, and at the sound of his voice the old man stopped and rounded on him. Bolin couldn't hold his gaze. He was too embarrassed. He looked down and rubbed at the metal on his wrists and remembered how he'd hit Su and how she'd metalbent him to the floor. "It's... It's got sentimental value."

            " _Sentimental value?_ " the old man asked. He'd stopped walking about midway between two tables and turned a disbelieving expression on Bolin. "How can a bunch of metal have sentimental value?"

            "It's a long story," Bolin said.

            For a few moments longer, the old man stared, but then he went about picking at the garments on the tables. This time he didn't stay silent.

            "You don't strike me as a bad kid. Strikes me that you might actually be a _good_ kid who's just down on his luck." He paused and tossed a couple of items at Bolin, and they landed all splayed over his lap. "So, tell me: What are you doing?"

            "What?"

            "What are you doing? Clothes you're wearing tell me you're from up around Zaofu, and if you're from there I can't see why you'd want to leave unless something forced you out. Something forced you out and now you're wandering around, is that about right?"

            Bolin nodded, but he wasn't sure that the old man saw. It didn't seem to dissuade him, though, because he kept right on talking. It was as though he didn't care if Bolin actually listened.

            "Wandering around down south won't get you anywhere unless you're looking for something specific. What are you looking for?"

            The old man rounded again and tossed another couple of items Bolin's way, and Bolin offered a very lame, "Thanks," in return. He wasn't sure what else to say. He wasn't sure how to answer the question of what he was looking for. There were so many answers to that question that he didn't know where to begin. He was looking for answers. He was looking for healing. He was looking for quiet.

            "I guess I'm looking for myself."

            The old man laughed quietly, a chuckle, really, and Bolin felt for a second that it might have been at his expense. But when the old man cast his eyes back down, something in his face had lit up, like Bolin's answer had sparked something in him that hadn't been there before.

            "You don't hear about that sort of thing much anymore," said the man. "It's not a very solid goal, if you get my meaning. How does a guy know when he's _found himself?_ "

            Bolin shrugged. He always shrugged. He hated it. "I guess I just want some quiet. I need some quiet so that I can think."

            "You a bender?"

            The question had come out of nowhere and caught Bolin off guard. He'd been caught off guard a lot lately, and he didn't like that, either. But he looked up at the old man whose delight had diminished into deliberation. His eyes were on the ceiling, his hand tugging at his hairless chin. He looked very contemplative.

            "No."

            Bolin said the word with finality. If he was going to change, he had to commit, and this was commitment. Even if he didn't call himself _Ping_ he could at least eliminate the bending, because in truth it was the bending that had brought on all of his problems. And who needed it, anyway? There were lots of perfectly capable, perfectly happy nonbenders in the world, and it seemed a harmless lie anyway.

            "Well, I might have an answer for you if you're open to it." The old man paused, and then he beckoned at Bolin. "Your shirt, kid. Come on now."

            Bolin didn't think much of it as he peeled the shirt off and tossed it to the old man. But he didn't replace it with any of the new clothes. He just sat there, looking puzzled by the notion of _an answer_.

            "What do you mean?" Bolin asked. "That you have an answer. What does that mean?"

            "There's a place upriver a ways, straight west of Lanxi. You know Lanxi?"

            "No."

            "Well, it's upriver a fair stretch. Week's worth of walking at least. It's a nonbender village that could use some extra hands. It's a tiny little thing, smaller than we are, even, but they're nice enough and trade with us down here sometimes. I figure that's probably the closest place to peace and quiet you're likely to find."

            Bolin had never heard of such a thing. He hadn't known such a thing existed. But now he thought on the matter, it really did make sense. There were all kinds of bending-specific groups: the swamp benders he'd read about, the firebending society that had ruined his life, and even the sand-bender communes he'd heard Su talk about. If only made sense that some nonbenders would form a similar group for their own benefit, and if they were afraid of or intimidated by benders, as many nonbenders seemed to be, he understood.

            "I've got a friend up there named Hokki. Old guy, runs a farm. Well, he used to. I don't know what he's doing these days. You should look for him and see if he'll give you some work. At least that way you won't have to steal, not that you're very good at stealing anyway."

            "Why are you helping me? I was about to rip you off."

            It was the old man's turn to shrug, now, and he did it lazily with another contemplative glance upward. "Like I said, you don't seem like a bad guy. You just seem like an idiot kid who ran off without knowing his business, not that I can really blame you if you were in the middle of that mess down in Gaoling. I'd have run, too."

            "Thank you."

            "You better be on your way, kid."

            But Bolin didn't move. He needed to think and his brain didn't want to work. His brain hadn't wanted to work since the collapse, had barely managed to crawl along through his thinking, and now was no exception. He was tired, and that wasn't helping. He was hungry, and that wasn't helping, either. Bolin wasn't sure how much longer he could keep going the way he'd been going, much less if he had a week or more of walking ahead of him.

            "Son?"

            Bolin cast his eyes to the floor, ashamed again. But then he humbled himself and pulled the metal from his right wrist and held it out. "I'd like to buy some food. And maybe a shower if this'll cover it."

            Silence. Silence so complete it made Bolin feel stupid.

            He peeked up to find the old man's expression changed all over again, his face softer and his eyes a little bit sadder. It was a look of unadulterated pity, and Bolin knew that look because he'd seen it before. It was the same look that people in Republic City used to level on him and Mako when they were kids. It was the same look Toza gave them before he'd allowed them to live in the pro-bending arena's attic. It was the look of a person who'd fallen on hard times once himself, who saw that same trouble in someone else, and who felt profoundly guilty that the suffering had to continue.

            He wondered if he'd give that look to someone someday.

            "It'll cover you," said the old man. "I live downstairs here, so it's no problem. Come on down and I'll get you a bag of rice for the road. That's about all I've got. You can have a shower and sleep for the night, but you've got to be on your way come morning."

            Bolin nodded. "Thank you."

            For the rest of the night, the haze of surreality in which Bolin had spent so much time came back. It shrouded around him from the moment he followed the old man downstairs and into his rickety old apartment to the time his head hit the arm of the old man's very musty, very uncomfortable sofa. But Bolin slept hard and he slept soundly, and he woke in the morning very much alone.

            The haze lingered even after he'd risen and dressed in the new clothes the old man had provided him, even when he ascended the dilapidated old staircase to the shop proper. It didn't hit Bolin what had happened until he discovered a bag with a note that said, "Good luck," which contained a few pounds of rice, a second change of clothes, and twenty yuans.

            So Bolin left the shop he'd meant to rob with everything he'd gone in for and more. The clothes and the bag he knew would last for years even with rough treatment, and the rice would get him through at least a week. He'd never expected to come across any real money, and that would prove more beneficial than Bolin ever imagined. But more than that, he'd come out of it with a goal. He'd come out of it with a destination and a name and a potential promise for a new start. He had a place to go where the society of firebenders wouldn't try to find him, because why would they ever pursue a village full of nonbenders, particularly if it was as small as the old man had made it sound?

            Still, Bolin set out with some trepidation. Everywhere he went the trouble seemed to follow, and it happened with such predictability that he'd begun believing that _he_ was the one who was causing it. The same way as he'd done in Zaofu, he'd managed to rationalize his way into thinking that he was the root of all the world's problems, even the attack on Gaoling, because if he hadn't killed so many firebenders and drawn the ire of their leader, they wouldn't be lashing out so hard.

            He worried that he'd take that threat with him. He worried that if he ever managed to find this nonbending village that the violence would follow him and he would wind up with more blood on his hands. He worried that his good intentions wouldn't matter in the end, because in the end the suffering wouldn't stop until he was gone.

            He kept to himself as much as he could, though the roads between villages widened and hosted infinitely more traffic than they had before. He didn't respond to villagers that greeted him and didn't respond to any advertisements shouted his way. He purchased only a dozen eggs and a bowl, because what else would he need to get him by?

            In the evenings, Bolin camped between villages well off the path. He cooked his rice and eggs over superheated rocks, and it never once struck him as odd that he could lavabend to cook his food but not for anything else. He never thought twice about it. And in the mornings, he woke against the trunk of a tree or beneath some rocky overhang, sometimes feeling good and sometimes feeling bad, and he continued on his meandering way.

            All he had to measure his progress was the passing of the days. For the first few, his mind lingered on the past. It lingered on Gaoling and Zaofu, and Bolin spent a long, long time wondering how Opal and the others were faring, how they'd dealt with his sudden absence and whether or not they were looking for him. He wondered if his plan had worked. And when he wasn't thinking about them he thought about Koga and Kazuo and the people he'd met in the arena, and he wondered how many of them had died. But those memories eventually faded behind thoughts of what was to come, and by the fifth and sixth day of his traveling upriver, the forests thinned and gave way to wider plains and Bolin had begun to feel tiny intimations of anticipation. He'd wanted a fresh start, and this was it. He'd wanted to leave his life behind, and this was how it was going to happen.

            On the morning of the seventh day, Bolin wandered into another small village that seemed a carbon copy of the rest of the villages along the riverbank, where he purchased an egg over rice and marveled at how much better it was when it came from a legitimate kitchen and how much more satisfying it was to eat at a table. Then he spent the remainder of his day touring the village and asking likely people if they'd ever heard of a man named Hokki or if they knew the way to the nonbending community west of Lanxi. No one had heard of the farmer, but a few people had been to the village on trade business, and they reported consistently that it was another day's walk to the northeast, and that if he followed the base of the mountains as they rose from the earth that he'd wander across it in no time.

            He walked straight out of the village and marched through the night, and the hills rose and the grass atop them thinned until all that poked out was jagged sand-colored stone. By morning his legs ached from the uphill climb and he was beginning to contemplate breaking to sleep, but then he saw the peak of what must have been a roof or a fence or a gate. Hesitant and a little afraid, Bolin crested the hill, and contrary to what he thought he would do, he stopped dead in his tracks.

            He'd arrived.

            Tiny could never have described this place. The houses were small units nestled at the bases of low-rising hills, and what little he could see of the paths told him that they were cobbled and well-groomed. From high he could see wide, fenced gardens with greenery and flowers, and beyond that, larger swaths of what appeared to be farmland that stretched down and out of sight. The place as a whole sat in a round valley between mountain peaks and looked more like a picture Bolin would see in one of Jinora's fantasy books than it looked like reality.

            He'd had no idea that places like this could exist.

            With a calming breath, Bolin tightened his grip on his bag and descended the cobbled path toward the first houses, and that was when the first pang of doubt hit him in the stomach. Who was he to invade these people's privacy, and who was he to invade it on false pretense? He was an earthbender and there was no getting around that, and even though he'd been trying to leave it behind, deep inside he knew he couldn't. Even if he stopped using his bending and kept it as secret to himself, it would always be there. It would always be some dark mark on him that, if it was discovered, could force him to give up any stability he found.

            It was worth the risk. It had to be.

            Steeled and determined, Bolin knocked on the first door he came across.

            "Can I help you?"

            The woman who'd answered the door hadn't opened it more than two inches, just enough that she could see outside, and Bolin worried that perhaps he'd scared her.

            "Hi," he said lamely and with the slightest stammer, "I was down south looking for some work and a guy I ran into said that I should come here and find a man named Hokki. Do you know him?"

            The woman nodded.

            "Can you tell me where he lives?"

            She looked Bolin up and down, and he felt his skin crawl. He didn't like the way she was looking at him because he'd not been scrutinized so thoroughly since Su had provided him with his new clothes, clothes that he'd peddled away on the blind hope that it would change him. But then the woman nodded and she jerked her head toward the interior of the village.

            "Hokki and his wife live down the hill. If you follow the path through town and past it a way you'll come across his farm. You can see it from the outer gate."

            Bolin nodded. "Thanks."

            "You're not bringing trouble, are you?"

            He'd already turned around to leave, but the woman's question made him stop. She'd sounded a little afraid, a tone that matched the expression she'd turned on him when she'd answered the door, and Bolin wondered why. Did he look imposing? He hadn't looked imposing for a long time, and even when he'd been in prime physical condition he never would have called himself intimidating.

            He turned around and tried to give her a disarming smile. "No," said Bolin, "I'm just looking for work, like I said. The man I met was a tailor who told me that Hokki was an old friend of his, and that he might be able to use an extra pair of hands."

            She didn't say anything.

            "And I was looking for a place where I could get away from the mess out there," Bolin gestured back the way he'd come, back toward the river and south. "All the bending has gotten out of hand and I don't want to be near any place I might get caught up in it. I can't protect myself."

            "Down the hill," said the woman quietly, and then she closed the door.

            Bolin followed the woman's directions and strode along the path toward the center of town. He kept his eyes low to avoid the judgmental looks he knew the townsfolk were leveling on him, and walked straight past the plaza where it seemed a farmer's market was in full swing. He walked for a longer while than he imagined he would until there were no more houses and the stones in the road grew rough and cracked, and then he reached what the woman had called _the exterior gate_ and he stopped to look ahead.

            In a time out of mind, the place might've been pretty. Once upon a time, it might have been majestic. But the farm that sat at the bottom of the hill at the end of the cobbled path seemed to have fallen into some disrepair. On its lot sat a house slightly larger than those in the village proper, with a facade of brown and sand bricks and wide windows that opened toward the valley. A distance beyond that was what must have been a barn--Bolin had never seen one of them before--that looked to be on the verge of falling apart. Its paint, what Bolin imagined had once been gray or white, had faded and chipped away, and large hunks of its wood siding had rotted into gaping holes. There were a few small sheds and a fenced-in area that might've housed a chicken coop, but the structure was larger than what Bolin thought any breed of chicken would need.

            Beyond all of it sprawled an expanse of farmland that stretched into the space between the mountains, a field that had been, at one point, meticulously leveled and planted so that green leaves and stalks rose in beautiful parallel rows. It was a thing that Bolin had never seen before, a part of nature that made his stomach swell with a warmth that he hadn't felt in what felt like months. It was the same warm swell he'd felt in Zaofu when he'd stumbled blindly across what had come to be his quiet place, the place where he sat and meditated and communed with the earth, where he'd practiced at his lavabending and worked to strengthen his body and mind with surprisingly potent results.

            He hadn't known it before, but he knew it now: This place was home.  


	48. A Path to Peace

            The first few days Bolin spent on the farm passed in no way he had ever imagined, almost like he'd been swept up by a sudden whirlwind that carried him from one point to another before he'd ever realized that he'd been picked up. Everything he thought would be difficult turned out to be easy, and everything he thought would be easy ended up more difficult than muddling through one of Asami’s technical documents.

            It had taken one knock on the farmhouse door to secure work. He'd had only to introduce himself, explain that he'd been sent by some unnamed tailor in some unnamed town down south, and the old man named Hokki said that Bolin would make a decent enough farmhand and that he could sleep in the barn. So Bolin slept in the dilapidated old barn with the fecal smell of cow-pigs and rotted hay, and every time he felt a light breeze blowing through the holes in the wood he waited for the whole thing to crash down atop him.

            Bolin spent his waking hours in one of two ways: Toiling like a slave between weeding the fields and tending the animals or running errands to town that usually involved slogging his way up two or three hills while pulling a cart weighted down with a couple dozen overstuffed bags of feed or grain. Oddly enough, that was the chore he enjoyed the most because it got him away from Hokki's gruff and thankless attitude and netted him more than his fair share of free drinks and food from grateful villagers. It gave him some measure of progress. The first time he'd wheeled the cart uphill he'd dropped it a quarter of the way there and had to chase it like an idiot all the way back down the path, well past the house while Hokki and Mei, his wife, watched and laughed. He'd ended up face down in a patch of dirt and wound up cresting the hill looking like he'd been bathing with the cow-pigs. But every time thereafter, it became easier to haul the cart until eventually he managed to do it without feeling winded, and he understood that he'd come a long, long way since Zaofu.

            His favorite days were those when it rained, because rainy days afforded him the freedom to do mostly what he pleased. Many times, particularly early on, he'd spent them idly in the cafe in town, listening to the rain and drinking green tea as thick as paint and waiting for his tattered old clothes to dry out before making his way back down to the farm to drag the dung from the cow-pig cage and gather the eggs from the picken hutch. But then, when Bolin realized that no one cared what he did once his rainy day chores were done, an adventurous desire sprang up in him and he took to exploring the hills surrounding the village until he'd come to know the trails as intimately as he'd known the streets back in Republic City, until even at the end of days that weren't rainy he could hike up to the peak of a particularly clear, high hill and watch the sun set over the distant forests. Most evenings he sat there on an upturned tree until twilight gave way to dusk and just enough light remained to keep him from breaking his neck on the way back home.

            The nights proper were different. It had taken Bolin a long time to sleep soundly in the barn, even after days of exhausting labor, and not solely because of the smell or the constant itchy poking of the straw that served as his bed. The wood seemed to creak every time he breathed, the floorboards bent beneath his weight every time he rolled over, and on more than one occasion a thunderous and eerie groan issued out from the barn's foundation that had Bolin so afraid of it dropping on him that he ended up sleeping outside in the cold.

            The barn on the whole reminded Bolin too much of the collapse. Everything there felt the same, from the constant noise of shifting supports to the hole in the ceiling through which he could see bright blue sky during the day and myriad stars at night. He'd spent several nights pushing his straw pile around the barn's second story to try and avoid the hole, but no matter where he settled down his eyes were drawn back, and he stared at it paranoidly until sleep overcame him.

            Even when he slept, it wasn't restful. The intensity of his work seemed enough to keep the memories from coming back during daylight hours, but no matter how hard he worked and how tired he was at the end of the day, nothing could stop the dreams. They weren't always nightmares, not really, but even the dreams that didn't recall moments of violence or terror sat uneasily in the back of his head well after he'd waked and breakfasted the next morning. The dreams that _did_ recall violence or terror left him so numb and panicked that he often didn't breakfast at all, and more than once Mei had commented about how horrible he looked and asked if he felt he was coming down with something. He never gave her an answer.

            On the whole, Bolin found himself hating his existence less and less every day, even when he was plagued with nightmares and panic attacks and when his legs ached so fiercely that he could barely walk. He found himself minding less when Hokki turned on his cranky-old-man routine, because the more time he spent around him the more Bolin was convinced that Hokki was putting on a show, because when push came to shove, it seemed like he really did care. When Bolin blew out his shoulder bucking grain into the cart a little too ambitiously, Hokki jammed it back in and then permitted Bolin to spend the next full day lying in the farmhouse on the couch while Mei fussed over him. The whole while, Bolin had insisted that he'd be fine as long as he laid off it for a little bit, as long as he took it a little easy, but Mei wouldn't accept any excuses and had pampered him so completely that he'd fallen asleep in the middle of the day without the slightest shadow of a nightmare.

            The relationship Bolin kindled with the old couple was in every way strange. Interacting with Hokki and Mei was like night and day, because Hokki maintained a constant, unbreakable front of indifference and stoicism while Mei was all smiles and doting and worrying. Mei was in every way grandmotherly--or what Bolin imagined a grandmother was like, because he'd never really interacted with Yin all that much--but Hokki wasn't grandfatherly. He wasn't even all that friendly. He was just cold and to the point, a little bit rude and a little too particular. Bolin imagined that he was simply set in his ways, as old men tended to be, because even when Bolin found an easier, more efficient way to do something, Hokki never accepted it.

            Things became even tenser when the vegetable harvest loomed on the horizon. Bolin worked and worked and worked, never up to Hokki's standards, and the nights grew colder and colder until Bolin could barely sleep for the freezing, until one morning Mei invited Bolin to begin sleeping inside the house because he'd, "Been helping out long enough to have earned a place inside instead of sleeping out there like a dog."

            Bolin accepted gratefully. He moved his things in from the barn to a tiny room on the farmhouse's second story, which had an old dumpy bed and a chest of drawers and nothing else, and he arranged what few belongings he had inside. He'd managed to purchase three changes of clothes with what little money Hokki had seen fit to pay him, and the single bracer he'd kept from Zaofu he put prominently on display atop the dresser. Then he lay down on the bed and watched the shadow from the window grow longer over the ceiling until the sun dipped low and darkness fell over the house. And then Hokki and Mei had started to argue, and Bolin's first night inside was utterly spoiled.

            He listened to Hokki's ranting about how Bolin didn't belong in the house and to Mei's cool responses, which ranged anywhere from praising Bolin's persistence to condemning Hokki's sour attitude. They went on for what felt like hours, until Mei said something that stopped the argument dead and stuck in Bolin's mind: "You can't punish him for what happened to Lee. It's not right and it's not fair."

            Bolin never understood what she'd meant by that and he never asked, but Hokki's attitude lightened up over the next week or so until his admonishments died out completely and there came some begrudging praise. Hokki began talking more to Bolin about mundane things, about harvest and money and how it was coming time for the next cow-pig slaughter, how he'd have to make a run to Lanxi to sell off the meat and grain he'd not been able to get rid of locally before winter came on in full.

            After a time, Bolin found himself able to enjoy things more, though whether it was because his lot in life had improved or because he'd been regaining some ground physically he didn't know. He just understood that everything got easier the longer he stayed. It became easier to carry on conversations, not only with Hokki and Mei but with the villagers as well, and while he'd never call his relationships with them _friendships_ , they were certainly more than mere acquaintances. Many of the village folk had taken to inviting Bolin to their houses to help with things that required lifting or an extra pair of hands. By the first morning frost, he'd built three fences and packed a dozen carts for trips to Lanxi, and many times he spent the days that were too cold for field work in someone else's house busying himself with mundane chores.

            It was interesting to Bolin how a reputation formed around him without his intent, and it wasn't a reputation he'd expected. He'd come to be known as quiet--introverted, even--but friendly enough when times called for it. He'd come to be known as helpful but distant, and on more than one occasion he'd heard people refer to him as _a little bit arrogant_ or _too much in his own head_.

            He was, in short, an abnormality.

            The one downside to working away from the farm was the girls. The village was small, to be sure, but the families who lived there were relatively large so there were a fair number of eligible ladies, and they were surprisingly bold no matter what Bolin’s reputation seemed to be. In the week leading up to the fall harvest festival, four of them had asked him if he'd like to attend with them. Bolin never accepted. He wasn't ready. He wasn't sure that he'd ever be ready, because every time he thought about entering into some new relationship he thought about what he'd done to Korra, and then he thought about Opal. Somehow, he understood that no matter how far from Zaofu he was or how long he stayed away, he'd never get over Opal, and of all the many things he missed about home, Opal was foremost.

            The first major setback Bolin experienced came two days before the festival, when Hokki had waked him at dawn and proclaimed it to be _The Day of Reckoning_ for the cow-pigs. Bolin thought nothing of it at first. He'd killed and cleaned his fair share of fish on the road out of Gaoling and he understood that animals had to be slaughtered to put meat on the table. The idea of it didn't bother him, not in theory, and he'd seen enough injuries and violence during his time with the triads besides. So he'd followed Hokki into the pastures more than willingly and watched him select three animals to bring back to the barn.

            That was when things went south.

            Bolin had never understood exactly how The Day of Reckoning worked, but when the first throat was slit and the blood came pouring down in a flood of viscous red death, he'd been unable to look away and unable to stop his mind running off. Aside from the sight of it, the smell hit Bolin hard and left him dizzy and feeling like he'd had a dozen sacks of grain dropped on his head. He hadn't been able to separate his thoughts or reason through the terror that welled up inside him, like his mind had ground to a halt and couldn’t start up again. Something in his imagination took him back to Fire Fountain City, back to the bloodstained stone he'd used to crush the firebenders in the hallway, and it lingered there until he could see the rock and he could feel the resistance as he pushed it, until he remembered Opal's terrified squeaking and his sliding along the corridor until his arm and leg and foot were ground up like minced meat. It lingered until the smell of blood mingled with the smell of rotting flesh, until it mingled with the stench of the decomposing body that had once been a person named _Yaozhu_ , and though he meant to excuse himself to go be sick outside, he fainted before he ever got the chance.

            He woke outside the barn with the sun glaring into his eyes, with Hokki and Mei's faces silhouetted against the blinding light, but he didn't recognize them and didn't understand where he was, and beyond that, the smell of blood lingered on the air and whenever he blinked he saw the dead cow-pig twitching on the ground and he saw the bloodstained, flesh-coated rock. Then he panicked. He lay there for a while, stunned and terrified, and when Hokki put his hand on Bolin's arm in what he must have meant to be a comforting gesture, Bolin tore away and bolted.

            It had been a mindless run. He'd gone with no destination in mind, with no goal except to get away, and he ran so far and so fast that his chest burned and his legs ached more than they'd ever done in the fields. He dropped exhausted at the top of a hill he'd visited many times, the hill where he watched the sun set on lazy days, and he sat there panting and working too hard to stop the panic. And when the panic finally faded he sat there still, his head in his hands, feeling ashamed and embarrassed and hating himself until well after dark.

            Some time after the moon had risen, Hokki showed up and plopped onto the downed tree beside Bolin, and he sat there in thoughtful silence. Bolin never questioned the old man, and when he glanced toward him Bolin noted an expression on Hokki's face that he hadn't seen there before. Was it pity? Confusion? Worry?

            "I haven't asked you many personal questions since you got here," Hokki said at last, his gruff raspy voice a little quieter now than it normally was, "and I did that for a reason. Guys come up here occasionally to work, they stay a while, and then they go on their way, and I figure that their business is their own and if they've got stories they want to share, they'll share them. Most of them do, too, and I guarantee I've heard some things that would curl your toes. But not from you. You're probably the quietest guy I've ever had, and you're the only one who ever refused an invitation from the girls around here."

            Bolin glanced over again, and this time Hokki was looking back, scrutinizing him for something, but Bolin remained impassive and expressionless.

            "Most guys that come here are drifters. They run around from place to place and stop just long enough to make a few yuans to fund their next hop. You're not drifting, are you, son?"

            Bolin shook his head.

            "Didn't figure you were. Well, if you're not drifting, it means you're running. That's the way I see it, anyway, and it's none of my business to ask who or what you're running from. The way you acted back there today tells me more than enough to know that I don't want to hear about it if I can help it. Clearly you’ve seen some things that are better left untouched. But I've got to ask you a question and you've got to answer it or I'm kicking you out of here before sunup." Hokki paused and sighed, and he looked out at the distant hills and the night with some degree of regret. "Are you bringing trouble to our town?"

            "No, sir."

            Hokki nodded curtly and got to his feet in the way that only an old man can, with a little grunt and a sigh of relief once he was up. "Well, we'd better get back then. Mei is worried half to death and she's had a pot of that tea you like so much on the stove since three o'clock."

            Things stayed quiet for a few days after that, days that Bolin spent mostly inside lying on his bed waiting for sleep and remembering why he'd left home and how stupid he'd been before he'd gone. He stayed away from the harvest festival, much to Mei's regret, and spent much of the night sitting on the porch watching the clouds and listening to the sounds of the pickens roosting in their hutch. The next time Mei tried to serve Bolin meat from a cow-pig for dinner, he found he couldn't stand the sight of it, and he swore he'd never be able to eat it again because just looking at it made his mind turn to Baihe Island.

            He kept to fish after that.

            Fall began turning to winter and Bolin's responsibilities dwindled even more, until all he had to do each day was tend the pickens and make sure the cow-pigs were let out in the morning and put back in at night. It was chilly but mild, as far as winters went, and Bolin still spent an excessive amount of time away from Hokki and Mei, whether in town avoiding the girls or out among the forested hills watching the birds making their westward migration toward the Fire Nation. The only days he spent inside were those when the flurries made hiking unsafe or the rare occasion when the wind made going outside unattractive, and he mostly spent those days inside by the fire, trying to figure out how to read again.

            He hadn't expected any work to come in, so when Hokki pulled him aside one temperate morning, it caught him well off guard. What caught him even more off guard was that Hokki seemed to be dressed for travel, and in the distance Bolin could see one of the larger carts hooked up to the only ostrich horse Hokki and Mei owned, an old arthritic thing that probably should have kicked off a few decades back.

            "Come with me," Hokki said, and Bolin didn't argue. He followed the old man and listened carefully, because when Hokki talked and walked he didn't mess around. "You're going to help me load up this cart and then you're going to head up to Old Lee's place for a few days."

            "Where are you going? What am I doing at Old Lee's?"

            "I've got to go to Lanxi and make some sales. We've got a lot left over from the festival that's got to go out, and I need to pick up some things to get us through the cold. While I'm gone you're going to be fencing for Lee."

            "How am I supposed to lay fence when the ground is frozen?"

            Hokki shrugged. "That's the point," he said, oblivious to Bolin's indignation, "it's not frozen yet. He wants to get it done before it gets too cold."

            Begrudgingly, Bolin followed Hokki to the barn, which still smelled vaguely of cow-pig's blood, and together the two of them loaded Hokki's cart until it heaped. Then Hokki set out, and instead of saying a legitimate good-bye, he told Bolin brusquely to, "Get up to Lee's."

            Hokki was gone for a full six days, of which Bolin spent three trekking back and forth from the farm to Old Lee's on the opposite side of the village, where he worked from sunup to near sundown helping him and his two sons lay fence around their house and gardens. They paid him fairly well and gave him breakfast and lunch every day, but that was really all the good that Bolin found in the experience because neither Lee nor his sons were a particularly talkative bunch, and they seemed especially distant when it came to Bolin.

            He'd met Old Lee a couple of times before now, when Hokki took Bolin into town for any number of reasons. Every time he’d met the man he wondered why Old Lee was called _Old Lee_ , because that would imply that there was a _Young Lee_ somewhere about, and he remembered the thing that Mei had said to Hokki about not blaming Bolin for what happened to _Lee_ , no old or young attached. He couldn’t help but draw a connection, but Bolin never asked Old Lee about the naming convention. He wasn’t comfortable enough with anyone around town to ask. While Hokki and Lee got along fairly well, that geniality had never extended Bolin’s way and he could never be sure why.

            Probably because he was still an outsider. No matter what he did, he’d always be an outsider.

            The three days that Bolin wasn’t laying fence he spent inside with Mei. He’d hit a snag in the reading, had run out of easily accessible things to practice on, and finally humbled himself enough to ask for help. Mei had been surprised by the revelation, but after a vague explanation she seemed to accept the truth: He’d been in an accident a few months ago that apparently knocked the language straight out of his head. She gathered a series of books on all manner of topics, and they practiced for hours each day.

            Bolin was alone and away from the house when Hokki returned from Lanxi. Mei had gone off to play Pai Sho with her friend in town--a routine engagement that he’d always found a little bit funny--so he’d taken advantage of the unusually mild day and set out on the trails again. He figured he probably should go out one last time because the snows might come in earnest soon, and he’d heard enough about mountain snowfall to understand that when it snowed, it snowed hard.

            Hokki snuck up on him. It was close to dusk when Bolin heard the rustling of footfalls on the partially frozen grass, so when Hokki sat down beside him, Bolin wasn’t exactly surprised.

            “How was Lanxi?” Bolin asked. He never looked to see Hokki’s troubled expression. “Sell much?”

            “Sold enough,” Hokki replied dryly. “We’ll get by.”

            The tone in Hokki’s voice drew Bolin’s attention, and when he glanced over at the old man there was no mistaking it: Something was bothering him, and nothing ever bothered Hokki. If it hadn’t been the sales or the purchasing of supplies for winter, Bolin wasn’t sure what it could be.

            “What’s the matter?”

            “It’s time you came clean,” Hokki said, a little of his characteristic firmness returning.

            For a second, Bolin was confused and he didn’t try to hide it, but then Hokki produced a paper--a flyer--and Bolin took it. He didn’t have to read it to know what it was.

            “There were a couple of girls in Lanxi handing out these flyers. Looked like airbender types, had on those weird suits they wear. Well, they were handing out these flyers and asking people if they’d seen a young guy, black hair, your build, same name. They said you were an earthbender but I figured that it must be coincidence, right? You’re not an earthbender, you haven’t bent a pebble since you’ve been here. But then they showed me the flyer and your picture is right there, front and center. There’s no mistake.”

            “What’d you tell them?”

            “Told ‘em that I’d seen you around,” Hokki said honestly, “but then I told them that you’d mentioned heading toward Ba Sing Se, and last I knew they took off north.”

            “Why? Why would you lie?”

            Hokki shrugged. “I won’t tell you it wasn’t tempting to tell them. They were offering five hundred yuans to anyone who could point them to you directly. But, I figured you’d have to have a pretty good reason to get away from them, to live here for how long and completely give up your bending. I thought I’d give you the chance to explain yourself before I went blabbing to a bunch of strangers about you for a quick payday.”

            Bolin nodded his understanding and his appreciation, but he stayed silent for a long time and stared at the flyer. It surprised him in a lot of ways, because he hadn’t expected that anyone would come looking for him, not after what he’d done to them all, and even if they had decided to search he’d not expected that they would be so persistent. He definitely hadn’t expected them to offer a reward. He couldn’t number the weeks he’d been away from home. He’d taken off in late summer, and any day now the first mountain snows would threaten to come down and bury the whole valley. It must have been two or three months, but he couldn’t remember what day he’d left Zaofu or when he’d arrived anywhere. He hadn’t paid that much attention.

            What surprised Bolin more was the picture they’d decided to use for their missing persons flyer. It wasn’t anything outlandish or embarrassing, nothing weird. But he looked happy in the photograph, and he hadn’t remembered feeling that way in a long, long time. It must have been cropped out of a picture he’d taken with Mako, Korra, and Asami, because he couldn’t imagine another situation in which he’d have been photographed with such a big, stupid grin, but he couldn’t remember a time that they’d all gone for a picture together either.

            It made him feel profoundly sad.

            “Well, out with it, then,” Hokki said.

            Bolin did as he was told.

            He told Hokki everything that had happened to him beginning with the day Lin Beifong had told him that Mako died. He talked about his bending block and the apparently explosive outburst that had brought it back. He talked about how little he'd been able to control himself after that, and how that lack of control had led to his being unable to protect himself when he was attacked. He talked about Opal and Asami and Korra. He talked about wanting to die. He talked about his nightmares and about how they'd seemed to come to life when he'd gone to Baihe Island to rescue his brother. Bolin didn't even gloss over the killing. He went into such intimate detail about the killing that Hokki couldn't maintain eye contact, and for a while Bolin wondered if he'd offended the old man, but he pressed on anyway through the explanation of his constant breakdowns and his ridiculous attempt to drive Korra away, through his escape from Zaofu to his trek through the mountains and into Gaoling's arena. He recalled every event and every feeling that had led him to this point, sitting on this very tree trunk beside this very old man, pretending like he was a no-name nonbender who'd just been out wandering around.

            In the end, it was cathartic. In the end, Bolin felt like some immense weight had been lifted off of him. He felt free and light and maybe a little bit empty, but it was an emptiness that begged to be filled back in with some wisdom or advice, with some goodness that Bolin hoped dearly that Hokki might be able to provide.

            But the old man sat still and silent, and Bolin fell silent, too, and the two of them stared out beyond the hills and watched the moon rising into the sky.

            "How old do you think I am?"

            Bolin snapped to attention. He'd expected Hokki to say something, but he'd also expected that something to be a judgment leveled after careful deliberation. He hadn't expected a question, much less one that seemed so far removed from the topic at hand. But Hokki was giving Bolin an expectant look, a look that indicated he'd been deadly serious in asking the question and that he wanted Bolin to answer.

            "I--" he stopped, his throat too tight to force out the words, and he cleared his throat and wiped at his eyes. It seemed like forever since the last time he'd cried, though what little moisture had collected there he could never have classified as _crying_. "I don't know," Bolin continued meekly, "maybe sixty?"

            Hokki’s laugh caught Bolin just as off guard as his initial question.

            "What?" Bolin asked. "What's funny about any of this?"

            "I'm seventy-two," Hokki said, "and Mei is sixty-eight."

            "And?"

            "And we've seen a heck of a lot of people come and go from this town, people who belonged and people who didn't, people who stayed for a little while and people who were too spooked by small-town living to stick around for long. I've been here my whole life, was born in the same house I live in now, but in all those years I've never met someone with a story quite like yours."

            Bolin wasn't sure if he should take that as a compliment, so he stayed quiet.

            "It seems to me like you've been doing a lot of beating yourself up," Hokki continued, undaunted by Bolin's quiet. "Seems to me like you've been too hard on yourself for doing the right things. By my reckoning, you were wronged. The people who were taking care of you wronged you something awful, treated you badly and didn't listen to what you said, as long as your story is true. But you kept on going. You kept up with them as best you could, and in the end you did what you had to do to get by."

            "Maybe," Bolin grumbled. He didn't believe Hokki's words any more than he believed in purple polka dotted beaver-tailed platypus ducks.

            Hokki let out what could have been a gruff grunt or what could have been a laugh. Bolin didn't know which it was and he didn't feel like asking, either. But when Bolin looked at him, Hokki was looking back, and for the first time since he'd arrived in the tiny nonbending village, Hokki was _gentle_.

            "You did the right thing, kid," he said firmly. "You apparently don't believe it, but if I'm to judge, you were always in the right. You had good intentions, and sometimes that's all that matters. You say you killed a bunch of those terrorist firebenders and I say _good_. Those idiots are out messing up the world and making ordinary people's lives a wreck, and the fewer of them we have to deal with, the better. But it seems to me like if you hadn't been with those girls when you went--where was it? Oh, it doesn't matter--if you hadn't been with them on that night they'd probably have gotten themselves blown into tiny little pieces or burned to cinders. Seems to me like you bailed them out something fierce, and they were either too blind or too proud to acknowledge it. Heck, maybe they were afraid, but I don't think they had reason to be. I think the most violent thing you've done since you got here was swearing a blue streak when you banged your knee on the table a couple days after you moved into the house."

            "You heard that," Bolin said, downcast still.

            "I'm surprised half the town didn't hear it."

            Silence fell again.

            "So," Bolin began after a time, hesitantly, "are you going to kick me out now?"

            "Why? Because you're an earthbender?"

            He nodded.

            "Do you know why this village is here, Bolin? Why we all stay here with all these other nonbending types? Any idea?"

            Bolin shrugged. "Because you're afraid of benders?"

            Again, Hokki laughed at him. "You don't scare me. I don't think you scare any of us. No, we didn't come here because we were scared; we came here because we wanted to be independent. We came here because we wanted to do things for ourselves, to be in control of our land and our production and everything else without the crutch of bending. We wanted to get back to the earth, I suppose you could say, to get back to our roots and do things the old-fashioned way. We wanted to do things the simple way."

            "So you're _not_ going to kick me out?"

            "No. If anything I wish you'd have told me you were an earthbender sooner. I'd have had you doing more important work than tending the pickens." Hokki paused and scratched at his chin thoughtfully, then turned that thoughtful gaze on Bolin. "Though I've got to say, I'm impressed you did all that work in the fields without earthbending. It would've made things a lot faster and a lot easier for you."

            Bolin didn't say a word.

            "I guess it explains why you were so inept. You've probably never manually dug a hole in your life."

            "You really know how to give a guy some encouragement," Bolin said dryly.

            When Bolin looked at Hokki again, the old man's grin had faded and he looked awfully serene. He looked a little sad, a little glassy-eyed like he was ready to cry. But his jaw was set and his mouth stayed still, curled into the tiniest hint of a frown, and then he shook his head.

            "I wasn't good to you," Hokki said at last, "when you first got here. I treated you like dirt. I had a son once. His name was Lee. He would've been forty-two next spring."

            Bolin didn't understand where this had come from, but it suddenly explained the mystery of Old Lee and the missing Young Lee.

            "He ran off when he was eighteen to go see the world. He sent us letters and photographs sometimes, and then he came home twelve years later." Hokki paused and looked at Bolin, deadly serious. "He came home in a box."

            All Bolin could say was, "Oh."

            "I've been wary of keeping help around since then. I used to get attached, especially to the young ones, because they reminded me an awful lot of Lee before he went. I can't say you were any different. You remind me a lot of how he was; a little dull in matters of farming but bullheaded and quick to act for things that are right. I figured you'd stick around a few days and go, but then you were still in my barn after a week, after two weeks, and then Mei invited you inside. I figured you'd be staying for the long haul after the harvest festival came and went and you were still here."

            "So you _are_ kicking me out."

            "No. You can stay if you want but it's only a matter of time before those girls figure out I sent them on a wild sea-goose chase and come back looking, and I feel safe going out on a limb and saying you're not ready to be found. If you were ready to be found you wouldn't have looked so sick when I handed you that flyer."

            "You're not wrong," Bolin replied darkly. "I didn't think they'd ever come looking for me. I thought I'd done such horrible things to all of them that they wouldn't _want_ to come looking for me."

            "Well, they must love you an awful lot."

            "Maybe."

            "Look," Hokki said, and he turned in full to face Bolin, then folded his hands on his knees and leaned forward, a bit eagerly and with a tiny scheming twinkle in his eye. It set Bolin on edge, but he didn't move. "Winter's going to be on us in full here before you know it. We've been lucky so far with how warm it's been and how little the snow’s been sticking, but I guarantee it won't last long and when the snows come on us they're going to come hard and there won't be anyone leaving this valley until the first melt of spring. That's why I went to Lanxi for supplies, see?"

            "Yeah, I see."

            "You're more than welcome to stay here till the spring melt. I'd be happy to keep you on because you're the best help I've had in a decade, even with all my insulting and griping. But if you want to know my honest-to-goodness opinion, you're wasted here."

            "What?"

            Hokki shrugged. "I've never heard of _lavabending_ in my life, and from what you explained combined with what little I know on the matter, it seems pretty rare, and it seems like you were getting pretty good at it. But then you stopped. How long has it been since the last time you bent anything?"

            "Two or three months, I guess. I mean, I cooked my food but I don’t know if that really counts."

            "So, it's real likely that you've gotten rusty. I'll lay it out for you as plain as I can: If you want to stay here and live your life as a nonbender in this village with us, you're more than welcome, like I said. Heck, if you want to stay here and work on my farm and use your earthbending to help till the field and plant and harvest, well, suffice to say I wouldn't rat you out. But..."

            Bolin's stomach twisted at the pause, at the strange emphasis he put on the contradiction.

            "But if things get tight and the money runs out, you can’t blame me if I send a letter off to those ladies and collect my five hundred yuans.”

            Bolin couldn’t blame him.

            Hokki sighed. “Once upon a time when I was a kid, I traveled around just like my little Lee did, and I met a bunch of people. I met enough people to know that there's a commune up in the way north of Ai Da He Province, dead west of Chameleon Bay and a stone's throw from the north Kangulan River, and I think you'd be better served up there."

            "I don’t think I understood two words you just said," Bolin admitted. He wasn't familiar with the region. He'd not studied maps as extensively as Jinora or even Mako, and he didn't know the landmarks or the lakes or the mountain ranges. He hadn't even known this place existed until he'd stumbled across it.

            "Sand bender commune," Hokki clarified, "up in the desert. I think you should go."

            At this, Bolin took pause. There were two sides to that coin, and he wasn't familiar with either of them. On the one hand, everything he'd ever heard or read about sand benders suggested that they were almost as crazy as combustion benders, that they were all but savage and without much in the way of morals, that they didn't mind stealing and killing unsuspecting travelers who'd lost their way in the desert. But then again, Su had mentioned on more than one occasion how she'd spent some time with a sand bender commune when she was younger, and there was nothing remotely violent or immoral about her except perhaps for her dirty mind and biting attitude, but Bolin supposed that those things were just as likely the result of raising so many kids and getting old as they were from her experiences with the sand benders.

            Either way, Bolin wasn't sure exactly what good it would do him to go seek out a commune full of nomads in the desert. He shook his head at the futility of it all, all at once relieved that Hokki wasn't going to exile him from the village for lying but incredibly nervous that someone would come looking for him and that Hokki might very well sell him out. It didn't matter from what angle he looked at the issue: No way he was even remotely prepared to face anyone from his past life, even if they were eager to see him again.

            He'd come a long way, but he still had a long way to go.

            "I guess I don't understand," Bolin said with a sigh that conveyed his confusion perfectly. "What could a bunch of crazy nomadic sand benders do for me that you and Mei can't do here?"

            "Well, for one thing, Mei and I can't earthbend so we can't help you brush back up," Hokki said bluntly. "But beyond that, I think you misunderstand sand benders. Like I said, I traveled around when I was younger, before Mei and I were married, and I putzed around with a couple of sand benders from this commune I'm talking about. Yeah, you've got your bandits and your vagrants and your general crazies, but you get those in any population. The group I'm talking about isn't nomadic. They've settled, as far as I've heard from travelers out of that way, and for the most part they keep to themselves. They're secluded. They do a lot of spiritual nonsense, they stay in close touch with nature, not that I know anything about that sort of thing. Really, not many know a whole lot about them because they don't allow a lot of people in, but I've got a good feeling that they'd let you stay with them."

            "Why?"

            "Because the distance you keep from people around here doesn't suit you. I bet you’d fit in with them pretty well. Now it's getting late and I'm getting cold. I don't have as much fat on me as you do and I've got to get the cart unloaded still."

            Bolin didn't miss the subtle jab, and he looked down at himself self-consciously. Was he bigger than he was when he'd arrived? Yes, most definitely. But there wasn't a whole lot of anything he'd qualify as _fat_ , not like there'd been before. Before the collapse there'd been just enough chunk about him to make him a little bit stocky, what Asami occasionally called _beefy_ , and he'd always hated that word despite her good intentions. He wondered what she'd call him now. Lean? Solid?

            By the time Bolin's mind had muddled through his self-evaluation Hokki had risen and was disappearing down the hill toward the farmhouse. Without thinking, he rose and hastily folded the flyer, tucked it into his pocket, and hustled to catch up.

            Over the next few days, Bolin spoke at length with Mei and Hokki about what they thought he should do. Hokki continued to insist that Bolin go, not because he really wanted Bolin to leave but because he truly believed that it would do him more good in the long run to get away and find a place where he could grow. Mei stayed fairly neutral and insisted that Bolin should do what his heart told him was right, and instead of second-guessing himself all the time he should dive in headfirst and see where he landed.

            He supposed that neither of them were wrong, but he still couldn't bring himself to go, not so easily.

            Bolin spent many hours at night lying on his bed and staring at the bracer he'd set atop his dresser, and he used it as a kind of focus for his thinking. The first night he'd stared at it, he'd wondered why he'd kept it to begin with, why he hadn't just pawned it off on the tailor for an extra bag or a spare pair of shoes. He'd gotten rid of one of them, so why was it so hard to get rid of the other?

            He'd always known that the metal served as a reminder of the past, as a memento kept from Zaofu to keep him cognizant of what he'd been through. He kept it as a reminder of what he'd done. But the truth was deeper than that, it was more complex. The metal, in its own strange, special way, reminded Bolin that he had a home to return to. It reminded him that there was at least one person, Su, who cared enough about him to deal with his outbursts and his violence and his stupidity, who would stick with him to the end. It reminded him that if he had no place else to go, he could always go crawling back to Zaofu.

            It took another two nights of gazing into the metal before his mind cleared up, but when it did the path forward opened like a blossom in spring, clear and bright and full of hope. He would follow the path that would eventually lead him home, but he knew that the path would be winding and treacherous and full of side-stops and backtracks and distractions. It had to be that way, because even after so long away, he wasn't ready to go back. Even after making so much progress both physically and emotionally, he wasn't ready to handle the drama of home. And as much good as Hokki and Mei's company had done for him, as much good as living as a member of the tiny nonbending community had done for him, he'd hit a plateau a long time ago and knew it. They knew it, too. They had provided him a nice refuge for a time, a place where he could pretend to be something that he wasn't and hide away from the truth, but now there was nothing else they could do. He could either stay there in the village and rot for the rest of his life, full of wasted potential and stagnant relationships and insurmountable guilt for what he'd done in the past, or he could move on, find another way, and keep working toward peace.

            In the end, he knew what path to take.


	49. The Desert

            Many of the days Bolin spent on Hokki and Mei's farm he would have qualified as difficult, but not a single one of them compared to the day he finally left them. Before dawn exactly one week after he'd announced to the elderly couple that he'd decided to be on his way, Hokki hooked their pathetic ostrich horse up to his equally pathetic cart, and he and Bolin set off on the two-day trek to Lanxi after a lengthy farewell from Mei. She had struggled to keep from crying, had given them breakfasts for the road and a kettle of Bolin's favorite hot green tea wrapped in a towel to keep it warm through the morning, and she had waved from her stoop until they'd disappeared over the high hill leading away from the tiny village.

            Hokki had barely said two words to Bolin in the last couple of days, after he'd insisted that he would cart Bolin out of town and see to it that he was well-outfitted for a hike through the woods and into the desert, if that was where Bolin chose to go. Bolin didn't mind the quiet. He didn't have much that he wanted to say: There was nothing that hadn't already been discussed. So he sat behind Hokki in the cart all curled in the quilts Mei had given them for the trip, and he watched out the side as tiny flecks of snow fell out of the sky and began covering the grass with the thin white blanket he'd been expecting for weeks but had hoped wouldn't come.

            He worried most of the way down. He was afraid on multiple counts. If the snow fell for too long or too fast, it was wholly likely that Hokki might be stranded away from the farm until the paths melted enough for the cart to pass through again. There was the chance that Bolin would get lost on his hike through the snowy forests or that he would lose heart and abandon his plans to head into the desert. He didn't know how to survive in the cold or the heat, had only walked during relatively temperate months, and wasn't sure if he had what it took to make it. And beyond those very predictable fears was Bolin's fear of the unknown, because he'd gotten comfortable on the farm and moving past its gated acreage to pursue something new was intensely frightening.

            But somewhere in Bolin's chest, a fleck of anticipation had begun to eat away at the worry, and his imagination ran as far into the realm of good as it ran into the realm of bad. He found himself daydreaming about what he thought it would be like to live with a bunch of sand benders in the desert, how he'd ride around on sand-sailers and learn how to move the earth in wholly different ways. He imagined the weird foods he would try, the strange tribal customs he would have to learn, and how eventually he might come to be as much a part of their society as he had the nonbending village. Everyone would always view him as an outsider, it was true, but at least he could be an outsider that fit in. At least he'd be an earthbender amongst a tribe of earthbenders.

            Lanxi was larger than what Bolin imagined it would be. Geographically speaking, it was about half as large as Gaoling and the place seemed cleaner and more welcoming besides. Bolin noted with interest that he'd not seen a single homeless person or vagrant as the cart passed through the streets. Everyone who wandered about outside was dressed in comfortable-looking, sensible clothes, long-sleeved and hooded and occasionally furred. All of it looked to be in fine condition, to have been made from the same high-quality materials Bolin had come to know from the region. And the way the people carried themselves, independent of any clothes or adornments, solidified the idea that this was a town of class and propriety where anything unsightly was kept out of the spotlight. Appearances here were important.

            Hokki made several stops as they passed through. Twice he made Bolin stay in the cart, arguing that Ling-Ling, the ostrich horse, needed company or else she'd get spooked. Bolin didn't buy the excuse, but he stayed all the same and didn't move from his seat until Hokki emerged from the stores buried under canvas bags and cloth sacks. He helped load the cart without ever being asked, and they set off again.

            Eventually Hokki drew the cart up before a dimly lit house near the edge of town, and he hopped out with a grunt. Bolin followed at Hokki's beckoning, grabbed the bags that Hokki indicated, and followed the old man inside. As they unpacked for the evening, Hokki explained that this was the house owned communally by the nonbending village, and it was where people stayed on their trips into Lanxi. Then he told Bolin that if he was ever in this town without a place to stay, he was welcome to sleep in the cabin.

            Hokki spent the remainder of that evening assisting Bolin in his planning as much as he was able, pointing out on maps and diagrams the best way to get where he was planning to go. Bolin could set out in one of two directions depending on the snow and temperature and how bold he was feeling when it was time to hit the path.

            The long route would take Bolin along the main road northward out of Lanxi through Xi Bai Province, where he could stop at any number of small settlements to restock on supplies as he needed. He could continue along, keeping to the major trade routes and always east of the mountain range surrounding the Si Wong Desert, until he reached the western branch of the Kengulan River which would lead into Ai Da He where it turned southward and dried up at the desert's borders.

             Hokki reckoned that such a route would take weeks, and that sort of time frame brought as many dangers as it brought reassurances. Being on the main roads would keep Bolin in plain sight, in places where he could hook up with travelers and seek help if he found he needed it. But adding so much to his walking meant that he would need more supplies, more money, and more motivation to keep going. Adding so much to his walking meant that it was possible he would get caught in the deep winter snows before he reached the desert, especially if his going was slow. Then again, if Bolin decided on the way that the desert wasn't the place for him, that he'd miscalculated in his plans, he could safely alter his mission and head north to Ba Sing Se easily enough.

            The shorter route was the more dangerous by far, at least after a time. If he chose, Bolin could follow the tiny branches of the Nan Shan River west out of Lanxi, off the trails and straight into the mountains. Taking that route would lead him fairly precisely toward the Misty Palms Oasis in Sheng Province where he could restock. From there he could head north and into the desert proper, a dangerous proposition without things like sand sailers or any number of rideable desert-dwelling animals, toward Ai Da He Province and the commune. By cutting through the desert he could shave at least a week off of his walking and he could avoid civilization at large, if that was what he meant to do, and once he was in the desert he could avoid most of the snow.

            When Bolin asked Hokki for a recommendation, all the old man could do was shrug.

            Eventually the maps were put away and the bedrolls spread out on the cozy cabin floor, and while Hokki sat preparing a kettle of thick green tea Bolin fiddled with his bag, packing and repacking it, unfolding his clothes and folding them again, putting them in all manner of different configurations. Hokki and Mei had gifted him a number of items he'd not anticipated having and hadn't known how to pack: Half a dozen books; a thick gray-green and brown parka to keep him warm in the snows; a pair of knee-high turtle-seal boots which Hokki boasted as being both waterproof and remarkably durable; and a thinner, wrap-like covering that Mei said would do him good in the desert during the day, when he'd need to keep the sun away but wouldn't want to fry in the heat or freeze in the night. Along with these special items, they'd purchased for him a couple extra changes of daytime clothes and a single set of pajamas, not that Bolin imagined he'd be changing into night things if he was going to be sleeping on the road.

            Bolin had been completely stunned by Hokki and Mei's generosity, so stunned that he'd nearly cried over it. He'd never expected them to give him such fantastic things, particularly without his paying for them or at least working for them, and initially when they'd presented him with the boxes he'd offered up his remaining metal bracer as payment. Both of them adamantly refused to take it, and when Bolin insisted on the matter Mei seemed to get very angry. But her rationale was remarkably strong. She'd said that the metal he kept would always remind him of where he'd been before he'd come to their farm, and that the things that she and Hokki were giving him now could remind him of his time spent with them. She said that there was no sense in giving up such important items, because sometimes those souvenirs of the past were all that would keep a person moving forward.

            After Bolin had packed and repacked three times, he shared a cup of tea with Hokki and then the two of them bedded down. While Hokki drifted off almost immediately--he was apt to fall asleep quickly--Bolin's mind kept working long into the night, considering the possibilities of what was to come.

            In the end he slept so little that he took a long time getting out of bed the next morning. He took so long that Hokki seemed a little upset, because he'd wanted to be back on the road home before sunup but refused to leave without a proper good-bye. Still, when he patted Bolin on the shoulder his face softened and his eyes dropped, and any anger that Hokki seemed to be holding onto died away.

            It was an altogether awkward interaction, Bolin thought, because Hokki wasn't saying anything and Bolin didn't know what to say either, so when he finally uttered a very lame, "Thank you," he felt stupid.

            "Don't mention it," Hokki said, "you did enough work that you don't need to thank me."

            "I really appre--"

            "Look," Hokki interrupted Bolin abruptly in the middle of another expression of gratitude that Bolin was certain would've sounded just as dumb as the first, "you're a good kid. You're a good _man_. You've got a good head on your shoulders and you make good decisions when it comes down to it."

            "Thank you," Bolin stammered, embarrassed by the unexpected compliment.

            "You don't need to thank me for pointing out the truth," Hokki snapped hotly. "And you shouldn't thank me, either. I'm not saying that to butter you up and give you the warm fuzzies, I'm saying it so that some day when you're faced with another tough decision like you were with those girls you know you can trust yourself to do what's right."

            "What?"

            "You stayed with us for upward of four months," Hokki explained, the gruffness still in his voice. He sounded impatient. "I watched you worrying and beating yourself up and panicking over what-ifs for a long time when you first showed up. Heck, you _still_ do it. But when you told me why you left your home and came out here, I understood. You're too hard on yourself. Life isn't fair and sometimes you're dealt a bad hand. Sometimes that bad hand means you've got to make decisions you don't like, whether it's as difficult as killing people or as simple as putting yourself first. For whatever reason, you don't believe you can make the right call so I'm telling you firsthand that you can. Maybe hearing it from someone you don't know so well will make you believe it: You've got what it takes to get along in the world, you've just got to man up. Trust your gut, because your gut won't let you down."

            Bolin understood. This was Hokki's goodbye. He'd never be so sentimental as to hug or shake hands or attempt any manner of real connection, but this unsolicited advice was his best attempt. It was all Hokki had to offer, so Bolin took it.

            He nodded, and that was all Hokki seemed to need. With one more pat on Bolin's shoulder he hoisted himself into the cart and settled in. As he set Ling-Ling to walking, he said, "Good luck," one last time, and never looked back.

            Bolin watched Hokki go with a mix of emotions. He was sadder than he thought he'd be, because when he'd entered the village he figured he would stay there forever, building a new life and living away from what he used to know. He'd not expected to get close to people only to have to leave them the same way he'd left Zaofu. But opposite the sadness was that swell of anticipation, the swell that drove Bolin back into the cottage to pull on his parka, grab his bag, and set out on the trail.

            It was at the last moment that Bolin decided to take the ambitious path, the path that would lead up through the mountains and into the desert straightaway, and he didn't make the decision because of the time it would save him. He made the decision because he felt good, because he felt confident in himself and his ability to make the trek no matter how arduous. After all, he'd spent the last four months--if Hokki's count was to be believed--working to better himself in mind and body. This could be his chance to prove to himself how far he'd come. It was the test he'd been waiting for, and he meant to pass. Hokki had provided him food and water to last a week on the road, and Bolin knew he could stretch those rations twice as long if he fished the river and drank from the streams. Supplies wouldn't be an issue if he was careful.

            As he proceeded, Bolin understood that there was only one obstacle that might keep him from the Misty Palms Oasis, and that was his own head. He had food to last and skills enough to replenish his supply. He had warm clothes and fantastically high quality boots, so even if the snows were deep in the mountains the only issue would be forcing himself to keep walking. On nights when the mountain winds drove temperatures dangerously low, Bolin knew he could rely on his lavabending to provide warmth to sustain him until morning.

            So, Bolin walked.

            The first night he camped by the riverside and pulled two trout out of the water for his dinner. He opened a small pool of lava near the water's edge and covered it gently with rocks, pulled a slab from the earth to serve as a makeshift roof, and he bedded down for the night.

            The second evening found Bolin in another town, the last he'd see before hitting the foot of the mountain range surrounding the Si Wong Desert, so he rented a room with a portion of the money he had leftover from his work on the farm and he ate a dinner of vegetables and rice and slept comfortably in a bed for what he understood would be the last time in a while. Undeterred by this, he was up and out again before dawn.

            The third day, Bolin noticed a distinct burning in his thighs and his calves, no doubt from the general uphill grade of the land. He noted in passing that the terrain was becoming rougher, that more bare rocks and stone had started poking up through the ground, and where the snow had barely stuck to the grass in Lanxi, it was certainly sticking here. By nightfall he found himself trudging through two inches of dense, slippery slush. That night he raised a slab of earth from the ground, cleared the snow away, and barely slept at all.

            By the fourth and fifth days, Bolin felt blessed to be an earthbender, a truth he found more than a little funny because a month ago he'd wished to be anything but. He used it constantly to level paths and remove obstacles, carving stairs and reinforcing precarious overhangs. The trek into the mountains proved more grueling than Bolin ever imagined, and that was _with_ his bending. He didn't want to think about how difficult it would have been otherwise.

            Hokki had estimated that Bolin would reach the Misty Palms Oasis by the seventh day, but on the seventh day Bolin had barely crested the spine of the mountains and his path had only barely begun winding its way back downhill. That night he camped on a sturdy outcropping from which he could see a wide swath of the Si Wong Desert stretching out before him, and if he squinted hard through the gentle snowfall he imagined he could see the twinkling lights from the Oasis among the white sand dunes.

            When he went to sleep that night, Bolin took heart: His path descending would be infinitely easier than it had been while ascending, but that was as far as he allowed his hopefulness to go. Too much haste would make an already dangerous route that much more dangerous, and the last thing Bolin needed to contend with was an avalanche or a tumble off a cliff.

            It was somewhere around noon on the tenth day when Bolin's feet touched sand for the first time, and he took pause and stared out in wonderment. Bolin had never seen the desert in the winter, not even in pictures, so what was splayed out before him was as many parts confusing as it was impressive. He'd always believed deserts to be hot and miserable all year round regardless of the climate in surrounding regions, but this wasn't. He'd expected the sun to feel hotter and the air to feel drier, but it didn't. If anything, things were quite the opposite: This place was remarkably cold, and where in the summer warm air might have blown the dunes into great sweeping waves, the frigid winter winds kicked particles into the air that burned almost as much as the cold itself.

            The place was daunting, and had Bolin not put ten days worth of grueling mountainous hiking behind him, he'd very likely have turned straight around and gone back to Lanxi. At the very least he'd get to the Misty Palms Oasis, and he could rethink his decision from there.

            So Bolin pulled the hood of his parka down around his face, adjusted his bag on his back, and trudged on. He kept his head down, his eyes locked on the ground just in front of his feet, and pressed forward as the wind beat against him and the sand stung any trace of skin unfortunate enough to be exposed.

            He hated it, and he wished he hadn't come.

            If the day's walk hadn't been cold, windy, or miserable enough, the hazy bit of sun that penetrated the clouds began to disappear, and with it went the clouds themselves. With the encroaching darkness came the mind-numbing intensifying of the cold. Bolin had thought the south pole to be frigid. Whenever he'd stayed there, he'd argued that any temperature below freezing felt the same as any other temperature below freezing, whether it was ten or zero or ten below, but now he knew otherwise. This cold pierced through every layer of clothes he had. It bit into his bones and froze his joints so that by nightfall proper Bolin had taken to shivering so fiercely that he thought he'd fall apart.

            There were two choices, find some shelter or stay out and freeze to death, and Bolin hadn't walked so far to lay down and die. But there was no place to shelter, and through the blowing sand he couldn't hope to see the Misty Palms Oasis. He was on his own.

            The first step was the easiest. Effortfully and with the ache of cold in his limbs, he planted his feet in the sand and rubbed his hands together, then he thrust his palms down toward the sand and hoped. He'd never tried any kind of sand bending. He'd never _had_ to. He'd never been interested in it because his heart had always been set on metalbending. But as far as Bolin knew, every earthbender could sand bend, too, if they tried hard enough, but he had no idea if he could _lavabend_ the sand.

            It didn't work the first time, and it didn't work the second time, so by the third time he tried to open a pool of lava, Bolin had begun to feel his stomach tightening in worry. He'd always relied on his lavabending to keep warm in the night. If he couldn't rely on it now he'd have to press on and hope he didn't freeze.

            For a second he stood in the biting wind and stared at the ground, at his feet covered in the freezing sand, and he contemplated. Clearly he was doing something wrong. He pulled his numbed feet out of the sand and took his horse stance one more time, and he did the same thing he'd done in Zaofu when he'd worked so hard to reclaim his lavabending. With a deep breath he grounded himself, clapped his hands together, and thrust his numbed fingertips toward the ground with all the energy he could find, and the sand gave way.

            When Bolin felt the heat, he opened his eyes and saw the foot-wide pool he'd opened, and with that small success came a swell of confidence that told him that he might not freeze after all.

            Bolin wasn't sure how long it took him to widen the pool and draw the lava from it the way Korra had showed him when she was teaching him the fundamentals of waterbending. It took a few dozen attempts before he managed to pull it up and cool it in place before gravity pushed it back down or the constant wind blew it away in tiny obsidian droplets. But soon Bolin had managed to make a wall strong enough to block the wind, and he hunkered down behind it and sat closer to his little lava pool than he knew was safe. He didn't care. It was warm.

            Even with the lava, the night passed miserably. If he sat for too long in one position he felt his joints beginning to freeze. If he sat too close to the lava pit he'd start to sweat beneath his parka and sea-turtle boots, and then if the wind shifted his clothes would start freezing to his skin.

            Worse was that he'd not constructed his makeshift wall to shield the lava from the wind and blowing sand, so every half an hour or so he'd have to open it back up before the top layer hardened completely.

            He didn't sleep. The closest he got to sleeping was sitting against his cooled lava-stone wall with his eyes closed, but whether because of the cold or the wind or the threat of falling into his lava pool, he simply couldn't drift off. For a while he looked at the sky, which might have impressed him had he not been in such a wretched position, and he thought about how different the stars looked here in the middle of nowhere than they looked back in the city. For a while he watched the lava, and that interested him, too. He'd always understood its consistency would change with temperature and what kind of stone he melted and how much energy he drove into its liquefication, but its behavior now was different than anything he'd seen it do to date. When he'd pulled it from the ground it had been ropey and resistant, and in its hole it seemed to be churning as the top layer cooled and sank back down, pushing new warm liquid to the top. Watching it relaxed him until the next gust of wind blew and drove his mind away from it.

            At first light, Bolin cooled his lava pool and covered it with sand, broke down his pitiful rock wall, and set out again with the knowledge that the sun would bring at least a modicum of warmth and understanding that if he got too cold he could open another lava pit. The sky stayed clear even toward midday, and as he walked Bolin found himself more able to admire the scenery. Everything seemed different in the daylight. Everything seemed more intense than it had in the city. The blue of the sky seemed more blue and the sand seemed to shimmer. It reflected light like millions of tiny mirrors, but it reflected the light in every color like a prism. If nothing else, watching the colors made the time pass by more quickly, and the relative heat of daytime hours motivated him by itself.

            By sundown that night Bolin felt no closer to the Oasis than he'd been when he set out, and that was before he considered how the desert looked the same in every direction and how he may very well have gotten himself lost. But he opened his lava pool and had begun the onerous task of erecting his rock wall structure when he heard something on the wind that wasn't wind. It was a noise so strange that he couldn't help but stop and look about.

            Bolin blinked, and then he rubbed at his eyes, and then he blinked even harder than he'd done the first time. There was a light out there in the distance, a flickering orange light that looked something like fire. But that didn't make sense. How would a fire stay lit in this kind of wind? And who would have brought a fire into the middle of nowhere?

            But it was there. Try as he might to convince himself to the contrary, Bolin trusted his eyes enough to know that the firelight was real, and as his mind worked to reason through how it could possibly exist, he felt himself beginning to worry. It could be the firebenders. It could be the Society tracking him down to finish the job they'd started in Republic City. The combustion bender had promised that they'd keep hunting him, hadn't he? He'd been followed to Gaoling and they'd attacked there, hadn't they? The chaos seemed to follow him wherever he went.

            Except for the nonbending village. And Lanxi. He hadn't heard anything about the firebenders since he'd fled out of Gaoling, and if they hadn't tracked him then, how would they have found him now? How could they possibly have followed him through the desert, especially through the night, without him noticing that they were there?

            Still, there was nothing he could do but watch as the light grew closer and wait to find out what it was.

            His lava pool had cooled and darkened by the time the light was close enough for him to understand that it was attached to some kind of sand-sailer, and by the time it came close enough for Bolin to see that the people aboard it looked friendly his chest had begun to swell with hope. And then the vehicle stopped some fifteen or twenty yards out, and he couldn't help but run over.

            Bolin had never seen a sand-sailer before, but he knew of their existence through books and a story Asami had once told about how she'd built one when she and Korra were stranded in the desert. This one was large enough for a box-like structure to have been erected on its deck with enough room leftover for a bench seat and mast, and what must have been an oil lamp burned from atop a pole that had been affixed to the very middle of it all.

            There were three men in total aboard the sailer, and two of them came out to meet him. The third stood still, watching from atop a small wooden pedestal that faced into the sails, but he offered a weird, stilted wave when Bolin looked at him.

            The men didn't say anything when Bolin finally reached them. Instead, they grabbed him by the arms and pulled him onto the deck, and while one of them ushered him toward the tiny wooden structure the other one went toward the bench. In the couple of minutes between when the men grabbed him and when his escort pushed him to sitting on the ground in the little wooden box, Bolin worried that these people might have ill intent regardless of whether they were affiliated with the Society. It wasn't like he could see their faces, not covered as they were with scarves and hoods and the like.

            He didn't know what to say, and the fact that his companion in the little wooden box didn't say anything either only made that uncertainty worse.

            "You were likely to freeze to death out there," said the man after he'd secured the door and taken a seat on the ground opposite Bolin. Then he began peeling off his layers. Beneath his scarf and hood he looked friendly enough, red-haired and bearded, and when he took off his gloves and produced a flame in his hand, Bolin didn't flinch away, firebender or not. "What the heck were you doing out there?"

            Bolin found he was still shivering too hard to respond.

            "We thought we saw a light and came to check it out. Come on, warm up your hands, don't be shy now. What's your name?"

            "Bolin." It surprised Bolin how much effort it took him to spit out his name, how many times he stuttered over the first syllable through the chattering of his teeth and how stupid he sounded when it had finally all come out.

            "It's dangerous to travel alone out here. Well, you probably figured that out, and I don't imagine you were out there by choice. That or you're an idiot who wandered in and just got lucky."

            Bolin imagined it was more the second option than the first.

            "The three of us are on patrol from the Misty Palms Oasis. We come out at night and do a sweep of the area looking for travelers who might've lost their way. Lucky we spotted that light you had or else you'd have been stuck out here. You shouldn't have wandered out of town."

            "I didn't."

            The firebender looked at Bolin skeptically. "What?"

            "I didn't wander out of town," Bolin said, a little firmer now that he was beginning to warm up, now that he was out of the wind. "I came out of Lanxi."

            The man's skepticism deepened. "You're insane."

            "I followed the river west, came up over the mountains, well, through them, kind of. I earthbent my way around a lot, but I came up over the mountains and hit the desert yesterday morning."

            "That's... That's a heck of a walk."

            All Bolin could do was shrug.

            "Well, we'll get you back to the Oasis and get you checked out. I'd be surprised if you're not half frostbite by now, if you've been walking around that long."

            "I thought deserts were hot."

            The firebender laughed out loud, a roaring laugh that hurt Bolin's frozen ears. "You've got two seasons out here: Winter and summer. Summer it gets hot enough to fry an egg on the sand, but the winters are colder than the hair on a polar bear dog's ars--"

            "I get it."

            "You hungry?" He dug around in his pockets and produced some dried something or other that Bolin didn't recognize. When Bolin didn't move to take it, the firebender brandished it more forcefully. "It's gilacorn jerky, we dried it--"

            "No, thanks."

            "Oh. I've got some dried buzzard wasp if you want."

            "I eat fish."

            "Oh." The firebender went quiet and put his food away. "You're not going to get much of that around here, though, not outside of sand sharks and they're too dangerous to get your hands on. Anything from them usually comes off the corpses people find laying out in the open."

            "Great."

            "You don't seem real talkative. I guess I won't gab your ear off then."

            And he didn't.

            Bolin never got the names of the men who'd been on the sand-sailer. They dropped him in town at a clinic where he was poked at by a hunchbacked old woman, and then she sent him next door to an inn where Bolin paid fifteen yuans for a crummy, dirty bed that he was certain would have him crawling with bugs or covered in dust by morning.

            It was the best bed he'd ever slept on.

            Bolin stayed remarkably busy the next day in the Oasis. Once he'd checked out of his hotel room, some three hours after actual checkout time, he wandered among the shops and stores searching for the things he thought he would need to sustain a prolonged trip through the winter desert. After Lanxi and his restocking trip before heading into the mountains, he'd had two hundred yuans left over, and using it he managed to buy a comfortably sized pyramidal canvas tent, a set of sand shark skin boots, and another bag in which to carry all of his provisions. He scavenged for other items: metal containers in which he could carry and heat water, jars for food, hunks of metal and hard stones that could withstand exposure to lava and be used to keep him warm overnight. By the time it was all said and done he had fifty yuans left over, which he used to rent out his room for a second night and buy a glass jar of what the vendor called _pickled sand shark_ , and then he spent the rest of his evening sitting in the dining room of a one-stop bar and tea shop where he drank four cups of steaming green before he recognized that people were looking at him.

            It took another two cups of tea before he was unnerved by the sudden attention, and when Bolin began surreptitiously scanning the room for reasons why people might be watching him, he understood: The same missing persons poster that Hokki had brought back to Bolin was plastered on the wall behind the bar, and more than one person had seemed to notice it. Whether or not Su or Opal or Korra had meant to do it, it seemed that attaching a five hundred yuan reward to his location had put something of a bounty on his head, and Bolin understood keenly what some people would do to capitalize on that kind of money.

            He left his payment on the table and slipped out at once.

            Bolin knew that he needed to leave. It was urgent, and though he'd paid for a second night in his dive hotel, he wouldn't be able to sleep there. It was entirely likely that someone was following him, that if he bedded down for the night someone might snatch him and drag him against his will back to Zaofu, and the idea of going home at all set more panic in him than the idea of being kidnapped.

            He gathered his things quickly and quietly, stuffing his sea-turtle skin boots into his bag and donning the thicker sand shark boots, adjusting his parka and his bags to make the extra weight--more than double what he'd been carrying on the way in--a little more comfortable on his back, and then he left. Any second thoughts he had about the notion of setting off into the desert in the dark were quashed immediately after he'd exited the inn, when he watched a handful of patrons from the bar pile into the lobby and begin harassing the woman at the counter. They were brandishing the poster.

            Bolin walked as fast as he could toward the opposite end of town, the north end of town, and he kept his head low and his hood up. He kept his eyes on the ground, even when well-meaning people called after him about how dangerous it was to be out so far past sundown. He walked and walked, keeping as much to the back streets as he could, but then he stopped.

            There had been a noise. It hadn't been a human noise and it hadn't been a sand-sailer. It had been something like a whimper, a feral and pained sound that made the little hairs on Bolin's neck stand on end. It was a distressed sound, a sound similar to the one that Pabu had made when he'd been locked in that horrible pythonaconda cage.

            Bolin made the detour.

            Following the noise led him down another series of worn down roads, back toward the middle of the city and back toward the danger. But every time he heard the weird whimpering it steadied his resolve, and every time he heard it, it seemed to be getting closer until at last he discovered its source in the form of an animal he'd never seen before.

            The first thing that struck him about it wasn't the way it looked, not the squat build, the rich rusty coat or the long, slender horns that curled up from its skull. What hit Bolin first was the fact that this was the only animal he'd seen in the town at all, and that it was tethered to a fence and pulling wildly at its restraint. Worse was that its fluffy white-tipped tail seemed to be weighted down with developing ice and its paws had sunk into the sand.

            Bolin watched it struggling and weighed his options. The ethicist in him knew that he needed to put the thing inside, at the very least, so that it didn't freeze to death out in the open. The less than ethical part of him wanted to steal it: After all, what kind of terrible person would leave an animal out in the cold like that? And the thing was large enough to serve as a pack animal--it looked like some weird cross between a fox and an antelope--and it may even have been large enough to ride if the need came. But then there was the issue of food and shelter, the problem of not knowing exactly what it would take to care for an animal like that, and those thoughts tempered his impulse.

            It took an enormous amount of effort to pull himself away from the thing, but in the end, Bolin couldn't risk getting involved, not even to put it inside. If people were already suspicious of him and he poked his nose where it didn't belong, it could spell the end of his journey. So with a heavy heart, Bolin adjusted his bags and set out again to the north with the sound of the animal's constant whining riding on the wind behind him.

            It nagged at him.

            It bothered him.

            It filled his mind with guilt.

            Against all his better judgment, Bolin rounded and marched purposefully back toward the building, back toward the tethered animal's whimpering, and he vowed to himself to throw logic out the window. After all, he'd done the same thing with Pabu and things had ended up all right. He'd go and untether the fox-antelope, because that's what Bolin decided it was, and he would let it go find its own shelter.

            The way the animal quieted when Bolin approached was almost as unnerving as seeing it up close. Its horns were larger than Bolin had initially thought, were long and gently curved and striated, and they looked incredibly sharp so the idea of creeping in on it made Bolin worry that he'd be gored. But the way the animal looked at him was more curious still: It looked like it understood.

            That was the end of Bolin's hesitation. He didn't have time to mess around. With a calming breath he strode into the yard and straight up to the beast, and he didn't even try to calm it before he grabbed its tether and untied the knot. He wasn't very gentle about it.

            "Go on," Bolin whispered curtly. "Go find somewhere warm." He waved the thing away, and then he turned to march back toward the edge of town with his conscience cleared.

            Ten steps down the line he fell on his face, pushed off balance by a hard knock in the middle of the pack on his back, and when he rolled over the fox-antelope was standing over him, looking down with the same curious expression it had worn before.

            "Go away!" Bolin hissed as he got to his feet and brushed the sand from his coat. "Go on!"

            He turned away again, and five steps later was back on his face.

            When he rose this time, Bolin felt angry with himself. Mako had always made a point to scold Bolin for being too generous, for going out of his way to help others even when it would cause him some distress, and now was certainly no exception. Bolin could practically hear Mako's pretentious browbeating, and he hated himself a little bit for giving into a helpful instinct that was now causing more harm than good.

            He didn't say anything to the animal. He just turned and walked away, and the thing followed him all the way to the town's outer limits where Bolin sneaked out into the desert between the shadows. The town was quiet and largely empty, it was true, but he didn't want to be found by the patrols or by any guards, not by any civilians nor by any bounty hunters. All Bolin wanted to do was set out into the dark and walk until he felt far enough away to set up camp.

            Fifty yards outside the Misty Palms Oasis, the fox-antelope was still on his heels. It followed at a comfortable distance, at a cautious distance, and whenever Bolin turned to shoot it a resentful look he noted that it continued to watch him curiously. One hundred yards out, it finally dawned on him: The thing was like a baby goat dog following a kid home from school in the kind of situation that more often than not ended with a disappointed parent forbidding another animal in the house because there were too many mouths to feed already. Except Bolin had only one mouth to feed, and he worried that even if he ignored the fox-antelope for too long, it would keep following him anyway.

            He stopped and rounded completely on the thing, propped his hands on his hips, and sighed grumpily.

            "Come on then, you stupid thing."

            It trotted up beside him, and the two set off together.


	50. The Commune

            It didn't take long for Bolin to see the benefit in allowing the fox-antelope to follow him into the desert. The companionship in walking made the days less monotonous mainly because it gave him someone to talk to, someone to whom he could complain about the cold. In the nights, it came into the tent whether Bolin wanted it to or not and folded itself up in the corner like an enormous antlered cat, and it didn't seem to mind when Bolin curled up against it and nestled into its fur. It shared Bolin's food, carried his bags, and nudged him forward when he didn't feel like walking anymore.

            Even though Bolin ate only one meal a day when he made camp for the night, the remnants of the dried fish Mei had given him ran out after four days and the eighth day's dinner brought him to the bottom of the jar of pickled sand shark, and that was great and terrible in equal parts. He was a little glad it had run out because he'd not been particularly fond of the preserved meat: It was too oily and tasted entirely of vinegar and salt. But the end of the pickled sand shark brought the end of Bolin's real sustaining rations so that all he had left was uncooked rice, and Bolin wasn't sure how long he'd be able to go on that alone.

            The only positive to Bolin's time in the desert was that some time around the tenth day the cold and the wind stopped bothering him so much, went from being bone chilling and horrible to being merely an annoyance. It got so that he could open his lava pit and heat his stones and bed down within twenty minutes instead of an hour, so that he could sleep without spending half the night regretting that he'd ever set foot in this abysmal place. It got so that when he woke in the morning he could tear down his camp, distribute the weight between himself and his fox-antelope friend, and set to walking without bothering to count the days. As long as he kept heading north, he would make it to Ai Da He Province and the promise of the sand bender commune, and if he hit the forests or the Kengulan River he'd know he'd gone too far.

            When Bolin happened across a town in the middle of the day he initially thought that it was a mirage. He'd never seen a mirage, had believed them to be the product of too much time in too much heat, and for a while he entertained the idea that maybe his brain had started to freeze or the blinding reflection of the sun off the sand was playing tricks on his eyes. But the closer he got to the town's outer walls the more the truth dawned on him that this was a real town where he could restock on food and sleep in a bed and take a day or two to make certain that he and his companion were well-rested enough to carry on. Maybe he could find out more about the commune.

            The people shot Bolin very strange looks when he walked in beside the animal, his hand resting easily between its ears. With no leash or bridle to speak of, this was the only way Bolin had found he could control where the thing went, and even still on a number of occasions he'd had to pull on its horns to get it to cooperate. Mostly the two of them had come to an understanding, that the fox-antelope could wander whenever it wanted to unless Bolin's hand was on its head guiding it along, and the arrangement seemed to have worked so far.

            The town was large, perhaps more populous than the Misty Palms Oasis, so there were people everywhere. There were pack animals that Bolin had only read about, including arctic camels and snow leopard caribou, which he'd heard Korra mention a couple of times in the south. Beyond that there were all manner of hybridized yaks and one enormous camelephant, a few ostrich horses, and some animals that Bolin didn't know. But the thing was that, excepting the camelephant, there were multiples of every animal and no one batted an eye at them. No one took a second glance at the camelephant, either. People stared at the fox-antelope like it was some kind of mutant, like it didn't belong. They stared at it like it was a bad omen.

            Bolin and the fox-antelope wound their way through the town slowly while Bolin kept his eyes out for likely places to stable and sleep, places to eat and places to purchase supplies, and he noted several options within the first ten minutes. Outside of one of the least occupied buildings Bolin stopped and rounded.

            "You stay here," he said firmly, and he pointed at the ground. The fox-antelope grunted its understanding and pawed at the sand. "Good boy."

            Bolin entered the shop to more strange looks, but he approached the counter all the same. He waited there for an awkward time while the attendants watched him, until he turned around and asked them if they had a problem with him, or if they'd be willing to help him out. Both of the shook their heads, and the elder of the two walked behind the counter a little tentatively before offering Bolin a horrible, forced smile.

            "Can you answer a few questions for me?" Bolin asked, more polite now that he was getting some attention, and when the attendant nodded Bolin sighed and continued. "What's the name of this town?"

            "Hongji," said the clerk bluntly.

            Bolin had never heard of the place, but that didn't deter him. "Do you know where I can find a room for the night? Preferably somewhere cheap that can put up an animal, too."

            The clerk shrugged and offered no more response. Bolin watched his face change again between nervousness and curiosity, watched the clerk's eyes dart between his own face and the face of the other attendant in the store. It was like he was trying to send a message of some kind, like they were trying to communicate without Bolin knowing it, and it set Bolin on edge.

            "Thanks for your help," Bolin said dryly, and then he left.

            It went the same way for the next four buildings that Bolin entered, places that ranged anywhere from bars to clothing shops to a single tiny grocer. No matter where he went the people seemed to try to get rid of him as soon as they could, so that by the time Bolin finally found an inn with an open room he was extremely flustered.

            He slapped half of his remaining money on the counter and asked for the largest room he could afford on the ground level, preferably something private with heating, and the bookkeeper hesitantly turned over a key. Then Bolin retired to the room, and once he'd checked that no one was watching he invited the fox-antelope inside.

            It was a small room, just large enough for a bed, table, and a chest of drawers for long-term tenants, but there was a fireplace built into the wall opposite the door that crackled and cast welcome warmth all over. Once he'd examined the place, Bolin peeled off his parka and the layers of clothes beneath it, and he threw them to the ground beside the low-burning fire to dry. Then he flopped onto the bed, pulled off his boots, and dropped his head onto the pillow, watched while the fox-antelope walked in the tiny space left over and flopped onto the ground beside the bed and well within the fire's warm halo. It curled its head around onto its flank and closed its eyes with a satisfied groan.

            For the first time since he'd entered the Misty Palms Oasis, Bolin found he could relax. Sure, the bed wasn't the best he'd ever laid on and the room remained cold even with the fire, but it was comfortable and private, and thus far he'd seen no missing persons posters here and no one had so much as asked his name. His anonymity allowed him the chance to laze about for a while, staring at the ceiling and contemplating.

            There was a great deal to think about, now that Bolin had set to it. He'd spent so much time focusing on staying alive that he'd not yet thought about himself or his current position, whether he was achieving his goals or even what those goals were. They seemed to change so often that if he didn't take stock of them regularly he'd find himself wandering purposelessly.

            He'd set out from Zaofu hoping to heal. That had always been his primary goal, and to the best of Bolin's knowledge he'd accomplished it. Perhaps he'd not yet achieved peak physical form, but he was infinitely better than he'd been immediately after the collapse. His ribs had healed so that no matter how he moved there was no remnant pain. The unsightly scrapes along his arms and legs, the wounds he'd gotten on Baihe Island, had reduced to scars so faint that he had to scrutinize his skin to really see them, and even though it had threatened to come out and still felt weak, his shoulder had remained in place. Granted, he had to concede to himself that he'd been babying it and if he tried bending all out it would probably end badly.

            Then there was the rest of him. Bolin didn't exactly spend his days admiring his physique--he'd never been so narcissistic--but there had been a few times when he changed his clothes or bathed or lifted something where he couldn't help but notice that something about him had changed. The first time it had happened was on the farm when he'd hoisted a bag over his shoulder mid-conversation with Hokki, when he'd looked over to continue talking and noticed that there was actually a bicep there, and while it wasn't as large as it used to be, it was definitely impressive considering how little he'd actually been working for it. He'd noticed other things in the same way, too, the development of the muscles in his forearms and the thickening of his wrists. He'd noted the strengthening of his back when he lifted and carried things between the farm and even after leaving Lanxi. And now he was thinking about it, he looked down at himself and noted that even his legs had undergone something of a change, had become more defined and a little bit thicker so that when he pulled his knees up, the trousers Hokki and Mei had gotten for him snugged up around his thighs.

            It was weird, but he supposed it was only natural. He'd been walking for what seemed like forever, and the times in between his walking he'd worked harder than he'd ever done back in Republic City.

            Beyond the questions of his body was the healing of his mind, and Bolin supposed he'd come a long way there, too, though some days it didn't feel like he had. He was still prone to panic and he still had frequent nightmares that had him wake up all sweaty and paralyzed with fear. He'd had one three days ago, in fact, and he’d long since given up hope that they'd ever really go away. But circumstances had forced him to cope with them, even if it meant pushing the emotions back down until he could reason through them later. But it also depended on the dream.

            Dreams of the collapse had become all but common, especially on nights when the winds roared, and Bolin could no longer say that they were in any way vague. When he'd first dreamt of that horrible day it had come to him in bits and pieces of sight and sound that always ended with black, but now it came as a single fluid scene rife with vivid detail that felt, in the moment, indistinguishable from reality. Now he saw in clear relief the building crumbling and he heard the cracking of concrete and the shrill twisting of the metal, and he could _feel_ the dream, too. When he dreamt of the collapse he felt the wind against his back, just slightly warm, and he felt tiny pebbles peppering his face as they rained over him. He could smell the dust. And at the dream's end, as he always did, he lay on the ground watching a tiny blue dot of cloudless spring sky disappearing. Many times he woke as soon as the first chunk of rock smashed into his chest, unable to breathe for a time that seemed forever with a mind full of terror so complete that it froze him wherever he lay. He woke feeling like an elephant-rhino was sitting on his chest, with a fierce burning ache in his ruined shoulder that made him wish he could pull his whole arm off, and whenever he closed his eyes to ward against the terror he saw that tiny blue dot.

            The lava ocean he'd once dreamed of had been replaced entirely with nightmares about Baihe Island. The faceless people who chased him over obsidian islands turned into the red-uniformed firebenders who'd pursued him and the others through the tunnels beneath Fire Fountain City. The dead-end wall that had once risen before him became the bloodstained rock he'd used to crush them, complete with tiny gelatinous chunks of meat and coagulated blood. The waves of lava rolled with purpose now, rolled over great swaths of people as they stood rooted to the spot in terror, and when the molten rock crept on along its way a line of human-shaped obsidian remained where the lava had cooled upon contact with their skin. Bolin could still smell it, the pungent stench of death and burning flesh. He could feel the warm wetness of _fluid_ between his toes and on his legs, dripping down his face and soaking into his clothes and staining his skin. He could hear Opal's squeaking cries as she tried unsuccessfully to express her horror. He could see Korra and Asami's faces as they stared at him in shocked revulsion.

            When Bolin woke from that nightmare it was to entirely different sensations. He woke able to breathe and without that intense pressure in his chest, without the searing in his shoulder. But he woke with phantom sensations. He woke with the scent of blood and fermenting flesh filling his nose so completely that he could taste its sickly sweetness in his mouth. He woke with such intense cold sweats that his clothes would be soaked through, leaving him feeling like his skin was crawling, and while mostly he could work through the feelings with time and a thorough examination of his body, there were occasions when the sensations came on so strongly that he itched at his arms and legs and feet until his skin was raw and the horrible crawling vanished beneath the pain.

            While Bolin regretted that the dreams would never go away completely, he held out hope that some day they might decrease in frequency or intensity. And if they didn't, he hoped that he'd get better at coping with them.

            He looked back at all the things that had happened and tried to figure out where he could go now, and eventually he came to an understanding: When he'd been alone in Zaofu he'd been on the upswing. There was no denying that he'd had slips and setbacks--he'd had many of them--but all in all he'd been better the day Korra, Asami, and Opal arrived there than he'd been when he left Republic City.

            When he thought on it, Bolin understood why that was: Between Su's strict meal schedule and his own relatively merciless training, he'd managed to create a routine. On the best days he could remember he woke, ate, meditated, trained, had lunch, then went out to train some more before dinner. Once in a while he might have snuck in a nap, particularly on days after he exhausted himself, but the routine varied little otherwise. But then the girls had shown up and that routine had been thrown completely out of balance, and _that_ was when the problems really began. Had he kept to his schedule and meditated in the mornings, no matter what had happened the night before, he might've been able to work through all the negative feelings he'd felt. If he'd kept pushing himself so mercilessly to keep up on his earthbending and his lavabending, he might've worked off the anger.

            Bolin found his new goals: Find the sandbender commune and find a routine that he could adhere to no matter where he was or who was around. Those were goals that were measurable, that had a definitive point of success. But there were other goals, too, which couldn't be quantified so easily. He needed to figure out who he wanted to be. In the couple of days before he'd fled Zaofu, Bolin had lost sight of who that person was and it had led him to doing things that he knew were wrong. Doing those things led him to hating himself more intensely than he'd done before, and by the time he'd entered Gaoling, Bolin understood that he'd been in the middle of a bona fide identity crisis. He couldn't let that happen again.

            Bolin decided that he had to accept the things about himself that he couldn't change: Sometimes he had trouble controlling his thoughts and his emotions. He had a definite issue with panic, particularly when there was any combination of blood, loud noises, firebending, or combustion bending. He imagined that there were other triggers, too, but those were the only ones he knew for certain. There was his shoulder that still threatened to pop out once in a while when he worked it too hard or moved the wrong way, his addled and occasionally very slow-to-process brain, and the headaches he got when he forced himself to read.

            It would take a great deal of thought, but Bolin understood: He needed to work to change the things he could to make himself a better person. Ambitious as the goal was, it was also possible as long as he accounted for the irreversible shortcomings caused by the collapse. They were just as much a part of him now as his bending and whether he liked it didn't matter.

            And as for his bending? There was no getting rid of that either, not unless he asked Korra to take it away from him, and even if he could muster up the nerve to look her in the eye again there was no way she would oblige, even if he begged on his knees. It didn't matter that he was--or that he had been--one of her closest friends: He was the only lavabender that anyone knew of, and destroying that rare of an ability would obviously strike the Avatar as unacceptable.

            But there had been some benefits to his bending, hadn't there? He'd been able to keep himself warm and cook his food through lavabending, and his earthbending had saved him some considerable time and effort in his trek through the mountains. None of that considered the practical, everyday uses for earthbending, either, and it didn't consider the weird ability that had waked in him that let him feel people in ways he'd never been able to do prior to the collapse. In lieu of the empathy he used to value so highly in himself, that ability had been his only saving grace, the only thing that had allowed him to understand when people were frightened of him and when people wanted to help. It let him know when they were lying for his benefit and when they were working to diffuse a situation that could otherwise have spiraled out of control. But it was an ability that Bolin had neglected above any others; he'd not utilized it in a long long time, so it would take renewed focus and commitment to hone it back in, to control it as he'd done in Zaofu and make meaning out of the vibrations rather than just _feeling_ them.

            That wasn't the worst thought that had ever lulled Bolin to sleep.

            The fox-antelope snorted, and Bolin woke. The fire had died and the room had gone a little bit cold, but it was fully the middle of the night and Bolin couldn't guess why the animal would be making noise outside of dreaming the way Pabu used to do. But when he looked at it, its head was raised, its eyes locked on the window, and it snorted aggressively again. Bolin sat up and followed its gaze outside.

            A bad feeling sank into the pit of Bolin's stomach, and just when he recognized it as a feeling of impending doom, the door flew open with an enormous crash, and the whole world went crazy.

            Before Bolin understood what was happening, four men had already piled into the room and two of them jumped atop the fox-antelope to pin it to the ground. The other two faced Bolin squarely, and Bolin could tell by the looks on their partially-covered faces and the angle of their brows that they didn't mean well.

            As they rushed at him, Bolin jumped from the bed to defend himself. He grounded his bare feet on the cold sandstone floor and yanked a slab of earth from the ground in front of one of the attackers, who tripped heels over head on it and landed hard on his face. It was fortuitous. Now Bolin only had one attacker focused on him.

            In the momentary lull before he went on the offensive, Bolin felt the earth like he’d not felt it in months, not since his time with Hokki and Mei, and he recognized at once the faint tremors in the earth through the soles of his feet. The feelings startled him with the way they jumbled together in incomprehensible sensations that rolled through the ground and into his gut. He'd not had his shoes off in a long time. He'd not felt the ground in a long time.

            It made him hesitate. He would have to hone the skill. He'd thought about this earlier. The sand had all but blinded him.

            Bolin barely had time to dodge low out of the way of the remaining attacker’s swing, and when he rose again he rushed toward the pinned fox-antelope. He kicked up a rock to knock one of the attackers away, and for a time it seemed to work until the rock Bolin had kicked suddenly flew back toward Bolin's face.

            These were earthbenders.

            It had been a very, very long time since Bolin had fought against another earthbender and he found the prospect equal parts terrifying and reassuring. An earthbender couldn't exactly catch him by surprise, and anything they threw at him he could either dispatch or deflect. In the absolute worst case, Bolin knew he could liquefy their projectiles and render them all but useless.

            But Bolin hadn't been counting on _these_ earthbenders.

            After ducking beneath the stone he'd thrown, Bolin came face to face not only with the man who'd targeted him, but with the first man that he'd tripped with the slab, too. Behind him, through his bare feet, he could feel the third getting slowly back up. All the while, the fourth had wrestled the fox-antelope to the ground, his knee on its neck, and presently was fixing some kind of blinders about its head while it grunted and flailed a bit frantically.

            At the same time Bolin adjusted his stance to strike out, a cloud of tiny particles erupted in his face and struck his skin like shards of glass. It stung his eyes like shrapnel, and he grasped dumb and blind at his face for a moment too long. Even when he'd been forced to the ground Bolin couldn't open his eyes through the agony, not when he was bound and not when he felt himself being dragged out of the room.

            Bolin never lost consciousness, yet he still didn't understand exactly what had happened. Whatever they'd thrown at him had disoriented him awfully so that all he could rely on was the feelings he registered through his feet and what little he could hear over the howling wind. When he focused very, very hard he could distinguish the four men from one another as they pushed him roughly from his room and into the biting cold. He couldn't feel the fox-antelope, but he could hear it, and he could hear the men talking to one another in bits and pieces. He caught words like, _poacher_ and _chief_ and _shibu_ , and Bolin wondered if that was what kind of animal the fox-antelope was. He wondered if that was what it was called.

            When they stopped walking, Bolin's feet had gone numb and senseless so that when two of the men grabbed him roughly under the arms it startled him witless. For the briefest of moments his feet left the ground, then he landed hard on his shoulder and he heard the fox-antelope squeal. His shoulder seared. The men yelled for the animal to shut up, and then Bolin felt a number of heavy thuds as they joined him on whatever platform it was that they'd thrown him onto.

            "Get him inside before he freezes to death."

            "We ought to let him freeze to death."

            "Chief won't like it."

            Then they dragged Bolin to his feet and shoved him along in the freezing. He wanted his boots. He wanted his coat. But soon enough he was out of the cold and heard the hollow slamming of a door behind him, the click of a latch, and his escorts' footfalls fading away.

            There were a number of possibilities, each one a little more terrifying than the last. These men could be the people from whom he'd taken the fox-antelope at the Oasis. He'd never known to whom it belonged, if indeed it belonged to anyone, but it wasn't surprising that someone might be looking for it. Then he imagined that these men might be poachers: He'd heard the word half a dozen times already, and when Bolin considered the strange and alarmed looks he'd gotten from the townspeople when they saw the animal, it seemed reasonable to assume that they might be rare enough to merit something like that.

            The final idea that came to Bolin was the most frightening by far: These people could be bounty hunters who'd seen his face somewhere on a missing persons poster and had lifted him to return back to Zaofu. His stomach dropped out when he thought about that, and it shamed him to think that the prospect of seeing any of his family or friends again was more frightening than the fact that he'd been abducted to begin with.

            When Bolin's eyes came back to him he recognized the small wooden box that surrounded him. It was the same as the box he'd ridden in on the way to the Misty Palms Oasis, the box on the sand-sailer where he'd met the friendly firebender who'd warmed him and offered him food. But this box was smaller, and though moonlight seeped in through its joints it felt far more confined. No one sat in it with him. There was no fire, and all he could hear was the howling wind and the rush of sand as it connected mist-like against the outer walls of what he came to understand was his prison, and if he strained very, very hard he could still hear the fox-antelope snorting and whining somewhere beyond.

            After his initial fright had passed on and his mind settled down, Bolin understood that this was a sand-sailer, too, that the weird rolling sensation he felt in the deck beneath him was the vehicle riding over the dunes and that the wind was just as much a product of the weather as it was a product of speed. Either way, there would be no bending his way out of here, so he sat tight, curled in a ball to ward against the cold, and he waited for an opportunity.

            An eternity later, the wooden door squeaked open and the light that poured into the small wooden box blinded Bolin all over again. He'd known all along that he'd been trapped for a while because at some point his stomach had started growling, but he never would have guessed that they'd traveled well into the day. The sunlight shining through the cracks in the wood had looked the same as the moonlight.

            "Hey!" Bolin cried when the door opened, a bit of desperation in his voice. "Who are you? What are you doing with me? Where are you taking--"

            There was a slimy, wet splat that splashed the soles of Bolin's feet, and then the door slammed all over again without anyone offering him a response. Then the smell of vinegar and salt and old fish hit him, and Bolin understood exactly what had been thrown into his box: A fillet of pickled sand shark. He could've laughed.

            He was contemplating the fillet when he felt the sand-sailer shift beneath him again, and then came the familiar rush of wind and pound of sand against the wood. They were off again.

            Four pickled sand shark fillets later, the sand-sailer came to rest again, and when the door opened he fully expected another vinegary hunk of meat. Instead, two of the scarved, hooded men reached inside and pulled him roughly out. It made his shoulder hurt again, and the light was blinding. When he looked around he could find neither the sand-sailer nor the fox-antelope. Worse, he couldn't hear its whining anymore, and that set a horrible worry in his chest. What if they'd killed it?

            Bolin didn't fight. He was too stunned to fight. He felt too weak to fight. It wouldn't do him any good anyway. So he looked around and tried to think of a way out.

            When he'd been pulled from the box, Bolin expected to find himself in another town similar to the Oasis and Hongji where he'd be shoved onto an airship and shipped back to Zaofu, but this place didn't boast any airships. This place didn't boast anything remotely _like_ an airship, and there were no outer walls or paved roads, either. The place was more rustic even than the nonbending village had been, though in an entirely different way. Rather than quaint little houses and pristine farmland, there were yurts and tents and a few rough structures that looked to be made of sandstone the same as the buildings in Hongji. But there was no pasture and there were no fields. There was no pleasant little stream and no mountains to be seen, no wells and no tea shops, no grocers, no bars. As far as Bolin could see, there was only _sand_.

            Before he could verify his suspicions, the men on either arm pulled him roughly into one of the largest yurts and forced him to the ground, and he sat on his knees dumbfounded for a few seconds before he managed to gather the nerve to look about.

            He sat in the middle of a wide circular chamber easily some thirty feet across and supported by thick wooden beams. All along the walls hung an assortment of scaly-looking hides and bleached bones, tables laden with tools and strange instruments that Bolin had never seen and couldn’t identify. When he looked up he noted that the ceiling seemed to be supported by a single enormous pair of jaws complete with wide rows of long jagged teeth. On the floor where he’d landed were arranged many colored carpets and pillows, and that told Bolin that this was a place where people gathered. It was, on the whole, the strangest place he’d ever been.

            In front of him on a decorative woolen rug sat a woman near fifty, dressed in clothes that Bolin would have only imagined in the south pole: A thick tannish parka and high leather boots. But there was no friendliness about her as he might've seen on someone in the south. She sat there all stone faced, her brow furrowed deeply with her mouth stretched into a scowl. She was the only one in the building except for himself and his escorts. Worse was the way that she felt, so different from the men who'd taken him. There was no feeling coming off of her, nothing that was transmitted through the ground, anyway, and that made Bolin profoundly nervous.

            He didn't know what to say.

            The woman shooed the others from the room, and they left without question. If her importance hadn't been made clear by her clothes or the decoration of what Bolin assumed was her home, it was made clear by the obedience of the men who'd kidnapped him. This woman was high on the societal totem pole--she must've been the chief-- and she didn't look happy.

            Still, she didn't say anything for a time that made Bolin's nervousness worse and worse until he felt a knot in his throat. She stared at him with her icy eyes as if reading his very soul, sat impassive and unfeeling, and just when Bolin felt like he would burst from the pressure, she spoke very, very quietly.

            "What were you going to do with her?"

            Bolin shook his head stupidly and blinked very hard. "What?"

            "With Shibu. What were you going to do with her?"

            He didn't understand, and his silence seemed to set the woman even more on edge. He felt a trace of irritation creep up on her. But he didn't know what to say, and he didn't want to say anything that would further upset her. Bolin understood his situation very clearly: He was a prisoner and his well-being relied on how this woman viewed him. There was nothing that would keep him from harm except for her perception of him; her servants had proved that obviously enough.

            "What were you doing with my antelope?"

            Bolin couldn't help his face scrunching up in confusion, and before he could stop himself, words blurted out from his mouth. "What? It's a _girl?_ "

            It was the woman's turn to look dumbfounded, and it wasn't mere confusion. It was stupor mixed with scandal. He'd offended her. He could feel it.

            "I'm sorry," Bolin stammered stupidly, "it's just that I thought only male animals grew--"

            "You're not a poacher."

            "No!"

            She stared hard at him. She stared through him. But the longer she sat there in quiet the less she radiated anger until eventually it seemed to go altogether, until she was unreadable all over again.

            Bolin would have rather she’d been angry. At least that way he knew where he stood.

            "I'm not!" he protested.

            "I know you're not. No poacher would be stupid enough to think that Shibu was a male just because she has horns. Fox-antelopes are extraordinarily rare in these parts," the woman explained, patient but stern after another stretch of quiet. "They're rare in any part of the world, really, and they're prized by people who would use their bodies for gain. Poachers sell them for their horns and their hides and make quite a profit."

            Bolin said nothing.

            "So if you weren't going to harm her, what were you going to do with her?"

            "I wasn't going to do anything! I was wandering around the desert and ended up at Misty Palms, and I heard her whining and found her tied to a post in the snow so I let her go. Then she just... She followed me!"

            The woman looked as though this news was strange. She looked deeply skeptical. "And why were you wandering in the desert? Clearly you're not from these parts or else you'd understand how dangerous it is to be out in the cold."

            "I've been looking for a sand bender commune I heard about," Bolin said factually. He'd said it in such a way that he hoped the emphasis would draw answers.

            "This is the only commune in the province."

            "Well, I guess I found you, then."

            Bolin expected that he would feel happier. He'd been walking for days, suffering out in the blistering cold and the biting winds, walking alongside an animal that couldn't communicate outside of grunts and whines, and had suffered a great many miserable nights besides. And he'd been kidnapped straight from his bed because a bunch of crazy sand benders had thought him to be a poacher. When he'd left Lanxi, Bolin had been absolutely certain that finding and staying with the sand benders was what he wanted to do, was what he needed to do to make himself better, but now that he was here and had interacted with the people, he was having some very strong second thoughts.

            "What do you want?" asked the woman. "I'm the leader of this commune and it would seem that I owe you a debt for seeing to my animal."

            Bolin looked at his knees and flexed his wrists. The bindings were beginning to hurt, were beginning to numb his hands. Again, he didn't know what to say. "Nothing," he said at last, but when he looked up at the woman she wore another deep frown. "What?"

            "You weren't coming here for nothing," she said sharply. She radiated anger again. “It would do you best not to lie."

            "You're a truth seer then."

            The anger dropped away. It was strange the way she fluctuated. Bolin had never felt anything like it before, and he couldn't be certain if it was because he was out of practice in reading the earth, because the sand was distorting the vibration, or if it was because she was so foreign to him. "How would you know that?"

            "I've met truth seers before. No one makes a point of warning people against lying the same way a truth seer does."

            "Then why are you here, truly? What do you hope to get from my people?"

            "I was hurt a while ago, a few months ago. I was broken, and I want to fix myself," Bolin said, and then he paused and flexed his wrists again. "Look, can you let me out of these?" He jerked his head toward his hands still bound in his lap. "Please?"

            "I'll let you out when I know why you were looking for us."

            Frustrated, Bolin felt a bubble of anger rise in his stomach. He clenched his jaw for a moment, looked at his knees, and drew a deep breath. "I stayed with a guy for a few months who told me that you could help me get better, but I'll be honest with you and say I'm having a lot of second thoughts at this point." He paused and waited for a response, waited to feel her shift through the earth, but nothing came. "Let's be honest, my experience with you people has been pretty bad so far. Your guys kidnap me out of my bed, don't give me boots or a coat or anything at all, and throw me down in front of you for judgment when I didn't do anything wrong. It seems to me like you're a bunch of stupid savages just like I thought you'd be."

            "You'd hoped to stay with us," said the chief blandly, unoffended by Bolin's insult. "But you can't stay unless you have something to offer to the people here. What benefit can you provide us?”

            Bolin looked up, dumbstruck again. "What?"

            "What service can you offer to us? Why should we let you live here?"

            "I'm an earthbender," Bolin said dumbly. He hadn't expected her to listen to him, hadn't expected what seemed like an interview, not while he was bound and on the floor.

            "We have plenty of skilled earthbenders here already."

            "I'm... I can lavabend," he added hopefully. For a moment he thought he felt a trace of hopefulness among her, too, but when he glanced up at her it looked like she was considering him very carefully. Her expression didn’t match the way she felt. One of her eyebrows rose as if she was appraising what he'd just said. If this woman was indeed a truth seer, she'd know he wasn't bluffing.

            "Is that all?"

            Bolin shrugged. "I guess." He'd never expected to have someone respond to his lavabending with _is that all_.

            Her hopefulness died away. "Then you'll not do for our commune. We have no business with an ordinary earthbender and no use for someone who bends lava." The woman stood and bowed at Bolin curtly. "But I owe you a debt of thanks for returning Shibu. I'll see to it that your restraints are removed, that your items are returned, and that you're fed and rested before you're on your way."

            The chief started out of the yurt.

            The bubble of anger that had inflated in Bolin's stomach burst. It warmed him through to his chest. She'd dismissed him after ten minutes. She'd barely heard his story, had barely understood the lengths to which he'd gone to come here, and now she was walking away. No matter how much he'd been reconsidering his decision to be here, she could at least do him the courtesy of hearing him out. He felt disrespected no matter how formal she'd been in her speaking. He felt outraged because her people had ripped him out of his bed in the middle of the night and dragged him half naked through the desert without even giving him his parka, without even giving him his _boots_. And on top of it all, he'd apparently saved her precious fox-antelope.

            "Wait just a minute," Bolin snapped, and he pushed himself effortfully to his feet, bindings and all. "You can't just _walk away_ like that. You can't just _leave me_. Do you know what I did to get here? Do you know what I've been through?"

            The woman rounded on him, confused and alarmed. Bolin took a step toward her, and even through the binding of his hands he gestured at her angrily. She stepped back, her alarm turning to fear, but she didn't say anything and didn't look like she was going to run.

            "I've been walking for _weeks!_ " Bolin cried. "I've been out there in the cold looking for you people because I was told that you could help me figure my life back out! I was told that you could help me get my earthbending back! I was told that you could help me get my _mind_ back! And you're just going to _walk out?_ " Bolin paused if only for a moment. It had been a while since he'd felt such overwhelming rage. It had been a while since he'd been unable to check it. But he supposed that this was as good a time as any to explode. "You need to listen to me and you need to give me a chance! You can't judge me by a five-minute conversation when I'm being held prisoner! You don't know what I can offer your people because you don't know me at all!" He spat the words venomously. "And you know what's worse? You were _hopeful_ when I told you I was a lavabender! I could tell! I could feel it!"

            "You could what?"

            Bolin seethed. "You heard me,” he said, his voice all low as he worked hard to temper himself. "I can feel you through the ground and five minutes ago you were all high and mighty sitting on your stupid carpet and now you're scared like a little girl because this weird stranger that's too dumb to know female fox-antelopes have horns has come into your crummy little village and is yelling at you!"

            "How could you possibly know that?"

            "Because I can feel you!"

            She changed in an instant that Bolin couldn't hope to explain. Her fear never died away, but it shifted. It complicated. Compounded with curiosity and wonderment, she stepped back toward him tentatively, her eyes narrowed in scrutiny. "You what?"

            Bolin breathed deeply. He wanted to yell again, but held himself back. "I can feel you. How many times do I have to say it? You're a truth seer. Am I lying? Does it seem to you like I'm lying?"

            "No."

            "Then what's the holdup? Let me out of these stupid..." Bolin stammered to a stop and brandished his wrists at her, pulled against the bindings and seethed. "Let me out and give me some clothes! It's freezing in here!"

            The chief moved at once. She crossed the room to one of the tables from which she produced a knife that she used to cut the bindings, and then she walked swiftly to the door and cracked it. Through it, Bolin could hear her ordering someone to bring his belongings from the sand-sailer. And then she turned back around and faced Bolin from a distance, her fear gone completely.

            "What do you feel in me now?"

            Bolin rubbed at his wrists idly. "Nothing," he said honestly. "I'd figure you'd be more afraid of me now that you let me out."

            "I see," said the chief, and then the door to her yurt opened again and a man and a woman, neither of whom he recognized from his earlier escapade, entered carrying his bags. As soon as they were on the ground Bolin dug through them, searching for his things to find it all was still there. Then the chief spoke again. "What do you feel in them?"

            Bolin stopped in the midst of pulling on his boots and looked up at her. "What?"

            "In these two," the chief motioned toward the people who'd brought in his bags. "What do you feel in them?"

            Confused, Bolin looked at the couple. Then he looked at the chief, and she nodded. With a great sigh, he pulled his boot back off, stood up, and planted his feet firmly on the ground. He watched. He listened. He dug his toes into the sand. "I don't know. I guess they're nervous, but who wouldn't be with some weird guy in their chief's tent." When he'd finished, Bolin shrugged, plopped back down, and went back about pulling on his boots. He hadn’t really cared enough to give much more explanation than that. It was too hard to read through the sand, anyway.

            He glanced up to find the chief exchanging meaningful looks with the others, and then they were alone again.

            "You'll stay," said the chief authoritatively. "I'll see to it that you're housed in comfortable quarters until we can find a permanent place for you."

            "What?" Bolin felt stupid. It seemed that _what_ was all he could say, but there had been so many twists in this conversation that he could barely keep his eyes forward. "What? Why?"

            "We'll speak later. I'll need to make some arrangements. Please make yourself comfortable in the meantime."

            Without another word, the chief left the yurt and Bolin was alone.


	51. Hallucinations

            For two months Bolin had been with the sand benders in their desert commune, learning their customs and trying his best to adapt to their almost primitive way of life, and for a while he'd struggled desperately. He was fine with the food but couldn’t handle the drink, which mostly consisted of diluted cactus juice on account of the scarcity of water, and it gave him horrible headaches for the first month or so. He made a fool of himself learning to bend sand alongside the children, and he embarrassed himself when he sunburned so badly that he had to spend four days inside with chatty old women tending to his blisters, because he hadn't realized that one could sunburn in the winter. He failed to keep pace with the men his age who'd been piloting sand sailers since they were six years old, who'd spent their lives honing their bodies and practicing for the summer sand shark hunts. And for that matter, he failed to keep pace with the women his age that'd been doing the same. Adding insult to injury, the Chief's eighteen-year-old daughter, Sun, ridiculed him daily for what she saw as ineptitude instead of inexperience.

            But there'd been progress. Even if he couldn't keep up with his peers, he still trained every day and pushed himself further than he'd been able to do on his own. He managed to open up about his past, or the less terrifying parts of his past, so that he didn't seem as aloof as he'd done in the nonbending village. He worked very hard to make himself relatable, or as relatable as it was possible to be, so that after a few weeks no one treated him any differently than they treated anyone else except for Sun, who hated him as a matter of principle. He'd gotten the attention of her mother, and perhaps worse than that he'd befriended her fox-antelope, and it seemed to like Bolin far more than it ever liked her.

            He discovered that Shibu truly belonged to her, because Sun had found the antelope half dead in the desert, probably abandoned by poachers because she was so small, and had brought her home and raised her as a pet. Shibu had never gotten on well with Sun, had let Sun ride her only once, but she seemed to get along well enough with Bolin and let him mount her twice within the first five weeks.

            Beyond that, there were more personal successes. He formed relationships with his peers in the commune, mostly because they'd watched him pushing himself so hard in training and approached him about his excellent work ethic. He earned the respect and admiration of the elders because of how well he worked with the children, and the children liked him because he was an outsider to whom they could direct their questions about the wider world.

            More than anything, though, Bolin came to appreciate his bending, and he regretted that there had been a time when he tried to deny it. While he'd looked like a complete idiot in the beginning, he'd managed to become quite adept at sand bending. In fact, he'd become _good_ at sand bending, and he couldn't help but attribute his wild success to the fact that Korra had taught him waterbending. If he bent it just right, the sand acted similarly to lava and all the fundamental waterbending forms he'd practiced so hard applied with enormous success. By his third week, he could pull tendrils of sand from the earth and whip them yards ahead the same as he'd done with the lava. But he'd not yet tried to liquefy the sand when he pulled it from the earth as he'd done with the rock on Baihe Island. Potent as it was, he didn't want to invite the risk.

            The Chief, who'd introduced herself later as Yan, assisted with Bolin's training, though in no way he'd anticipated. She seemed unusually interested in what she'd come to call his _seismic sens_ e, his ability to feel the changes in people's bodies and emotions through the vibrations they sent into the ground, and as a result she'd begun daily meditations and exercises meant to strengthen his bond with the earth. She explained that his seismic sense was what had interested her in him to begin with and was what allowed him to stay in the colony, because she wanted to explore it further and understand why he was so anomalous.

            All of the attention made Sun hate Bolin even more.

            As a part of their training together, Bolin and Yan spoke at length about the abilities of earthbenders, how some were gifted with rare talents and others less so as a matter of birth. Then they began discussing abilities that were rare as a matter of _talent_ , as a matter of practice and study and training, and that was where Bolin became interested, too.

            All earthbenders could metalbend with enough training. Even if they never mastered the technique, there was nothing holding them back except for themselves. It was the same way with sand bending. Every earthbender could manipulate the sand if they practiced, and sand bending was arguably much easier than metalbending.

            In much the same way, Yan explained, all earthbenders were capable of truth seeing in one way or another, though some were better at it than others as a matter of course. With enough attunement and practice, anyone could read people through the earth, but there had been so much superstition surrounding the ability that very few people ever tried. Few people even wanted to try. Of course, there were those who were gifted enough to be able to see truth without training, and Yan counted herself among those. But then there were those who had to work hard at it, and she counted Bolin among them.

            The suggestion went against everything Bolin had ever believed about himself. He'd insisted countless times that he _wasn't_ a truth seer because he could never be certain one way or another if someone was lying. All he'd ever been able to do was feel shifts in their bodies when different circumstances rose, and the rest had been left to inference. He'd been able to call Asami on dodging the truth and he'd been able to call Su on it, too, but others weren't so transparent. He couldn't do it consistently. But what he was doing, as Yan explained, was actually a kind of primitive truth seeing. It was unrefined. It made him _like_ a truth seer without actually _being_ a truth seer. It was what many gifted people experienced when they were children, before they understood what they were capable of, except that Bolin hadn't recognized his ability until the collapse.

            It didn't make much sense to Bolin. He couldn't wrap his head around how such an ability could just _pop up_ after a traumatic event like the collapse, how he could begin experiencing things he'd never experienced before just because he'd taken a shot to the head. But Yan explained that, too.

            She likened it to sudden blindness: In the absence of sight, an earthbender could learn how to see through their feet, which Bolin had witnessed firsthand through Toph Beifong and understood very clearly. Of course someone without sight would use their earthbending to read their surroundings. But he _had_ his sight, and he had his hearing and every other sense, too, but apparently that didn't matter. There had been a time immediately after the attack where he'd been lost in a void of senselessness, days when the only thing he could trust was his sense of touch because everything he heard and saw he'd believed to be a dream, because his ability to feel things gave him a concrete connection to reality, and his body had compensated the same way it would have if he'd gone blind or deaf. His sense of touch had kicked into overdrive and allowed him to begin feeling minute changes in the earth, and just because his other senses eventually came back didn't mean that the heightened sense of feeling went away. It was more that in the absence of everything else, the feeling was all he had, and once he realized it was there he couldn't ignore it even when his other senses returned.

            So, Bolin trained his seismic sense, too, because he appreciated the ability he'd apparently always had but hadn't understood, and it took a great deal of effort to begin sorting it out at all.

            He practiced often with Sun, who never truly knew that he was practicing on her, and he didn't feel bad about his deception in the slightest. Despite her disliking him, she was an interesting person to read because she seemed everywhere and nowhere all at once. Her emotions swung like a pendulum that could only be explained through remembering that she was, in fact, still a teenage girl.

            Each day he visited her under the guise of seeing Shibu, and each day he showed up his interactions with Sun started out as rocky as ever. But the longer he stayed and the less he interacted with her, the calmer she got. Eventually she begrudgingly accepted his company. Then she begrudgingly accepted his interacting with Shibu. Then she begrudgingly encouraged Bolin to bond with the animal because she "couldn't do it anyway" and "didn't really care." Eventually there came a time when she said nothing, and in those times Bolin could feel no negativity about her at all.

            When the winter winds stopped blowing, Bolin remembered what he'd been told about the desert seasons, how one day it would be colder than the poles and the next it would be unbearably hot, and after a single week of what he might've called _spring weather_ , the heat set in and the commune's hunting parties began ramping up for their busy season. Bolin watched it all with a mix of wonder and envy, because all he wanted was to be a part of their society, and the day when Yan suggested he try to go out with them, Bolin was elated.

            The very next day he set to work learning everything he'd need to know about participating in the sand shark hunt, about where the sand sharks spawned and what routes the hunters took to get there. He learned about weapons and bending techniques and how they could be used in tandem to bring even a fully-grown sand shark down. He learned the formations: _Lifts_ drove the sand sharks from their holes in the dunes and began the chase; _Flanks_ kept the sharks on the path they intended; _Forwards_ brought the animals down. It took a week for him just to understand the basics, never mind actually getting out into the field, but he worked hard all the same so that when the time finally came for him to get out and _do it_ , he would feel prepared.

            But he wasn't.

            He collapsed his first day in the desert proper. He'd been running with the other forwards when the heat caught up to him, when he started feeling a little sick and a little lightheaded, a little bit cramped. He chalked it up to being out of shape and pressed on because he wasn't used to the oppressive heat and didn't really know what it felt like to be dehydrated. He didn't recognize it when he stopped sweating or when his head began to hurt. The only warning he got was what came from his chest, when he recognized very suddenly the strange drumming palpitations that he'd not felt since before he'd left Zaofu, and they confused him even more because he wasn't panicking and that seemed to have been the only time he'd ever felt them. Hadn't it been? By the time he realized that he'd overexerted himself, it was too late. He stopped in the middle of the group and stood stupefied for a few dizzying seconds, and that was the last thing he remembered.

            He woke up disoriented and nauseous on the floor of Yan's yurt, his head propped up on an uncomfortable fiber pillow, and he realized at once what had happened.  He felt very, very stupid and Sun's laughing at him didn't help matters at all.

            Whether Bolin understood or not, Yan explained everything while she forced cups of pure water onto him, and it struck Bolin as strange how different and bland the water tasted when it wasn’t a quarter cactus juice. He’d already surmised the bit about the heat, about hydrating, about making sure he was eating right and sleeping enough and taking care of himself, making sure he was wearing the right clothes for the right temperatures. But he didn’t expect her to tell him that he’d need to give up his ambition of hunting with the others. He didn’t expect her to suggest that his body couldn’t handle so much exertion in so much heat, and that she wasn’t going to allow him to risk dying just so he could go run around in the sand.

            After that, Bolin understood that there existed yet another irreparable consequence of the collapse and its aftermath: The starving and malnourishment and general neglect of his body had caused some lasting damage to his heart at the very least, and it was painfully likely that he’d never be able to exert himself the same way he’d done before. He’d always have to keep an eye on himself because the drumming was no longer just a result of panic and too much adrenaline.

            He figured that he deserved it because he’d treated himself so badly for so long, and he spent the whole of his recovery berating himself for having been such an idiot.

            That he could no longer participate in the sand shark hunting didn’t seem to impact his relationship with the others, though. They were an oddly open-minded bunch of people, and when Yan explained to them that Bolin couldn’t work with them as a matter of physical limitation, they accepted it at face value. Instead of spending time with him in training or out in the desert proper, they visited him between hunts. They discussed things far removed from sand sharks, things that bored Bolin senseless. He was too polite, though, and he played the conversationalist decently enough that no one seemed to notice how unhappy the restrictions made him. Otherwise he spent his days walking around with Shibu and Sun, learning the places and people in the settlement and trying to understand what his place might be.

            The first successful sand shark hunt of the season was more a spectacle than what Bolin believed it would be, and it made him feel worse still. He’d been outside with Shibu when the sand sailers rolled back over the dunes in a formation he’d never seen, all abreast and in line with an enormous sand shark lashed between them. By the time the sailers stopped and the hunters disembarked, the entire settlement had come out to watch, and what happened thereafter was a communal effort on a scale that Bolin had never imagined.

            Dozens of people rushed out of the boundaries of the village and rent an enormous trench in the sand while dozens more untethered the gigantic fishy monster from the sand sailers, and with great effort the thing was heaved into the hole. Then they began dismantling it: They skinned it from tail to head, pried what teeth they could pull out of its iron like jaw, and then they began the process of gathering the flesh. Bolin imagined that such a gargantuan task would take a week, but the thing had been rendered a skeleton after two days and the smell of fish and ammonia permeated the whole commune. No one but Bolin seemed to mind, and on the third day they buried the skeleton in the sand. After that, the smell disappeared.

            If the sand shark was the biggest animal Bolin had ever seen, the celebration put on after it had been cleaned and processed was the biggest _party_ he'd ever seen, and for good reason. Every member of the commune was in attendance so that even Yan's enormous Chieftain's yurt couldn't house them all, and there were sandstone blocks covered with shark meat prepared in every way Bolin could imagine. It was boiled, fried, smoked, brined, seared, and raw. It had been diced and put into stews and soups and cut into strips for strange vegetable stir frys. Bolin found that the dried fish was the best, but he sampled every dish he could get his hands on and, in turn, managed to mingle and talk with people he'd never even seen in the encampment, learning about their family recipes and traditions that he'd never known existed.

            For a while he managed to forget about his personal embarrassment because he was so thoroughly distracted by the prospect of so many different kinds of food he could actually stomach, but when the sun started to set the celebration took on a very ceremonial tone that made Bolin feel self-conscious and extremely foreign.

            The hunting party of eighteen marched into the yurt and presented themselves to the people, and three by three they sat on the ground. The crowd inside the canvas building was too thick for Bolin to see what was happening even when he stood on the tips of his toes, and it wasn't until Chief Yan presented the lot of them to the crowd a second time, almost an hour later, that he understood that they'd been marked.

            He'd seen the marks on people before, patterns of dots and lines along their ribs, but he'd never bothered to ask what they were or what they meant. The first time he'd seen one had been on one of the younger hunters he'd worked with, and Bolin had believed the single dot on his lower left rib to be some thumbprint birthmark. But then he'd seen other people with them, too, and some people with several of them, and that told him the marks were very deliberate. The older, more experienced hunters had stacks of them, rows of alternating dots and lines, but the only rhyme or reason Bolin could figure was that each row of dots was separated by a single pencil-thin line that wrapped from the underarm halfway to the sternum. Each one of the twelve men and six women who'd entered the yurts came out with a new, angry looking mark. Sixteen had gotten new dots. Two had gotten new lines.

            When all the ceremony had concluded, the celebration moved into the open where the frivolity escalated. Bolin met Sun by chance at the entrance to the Chieftain's yurt, and he followed her like a lost dog the entire night. She acted annoyed, but Bolin could feel otherwise. He wondered if she didn't mind the company.

            If there was a single conclusion that Bolin had drawn about Sun, it was that she didn't have many friends. Considering her joyless attitude, it wasn't a wonder why. But he still felt bad for her in a way because her friendlessness seemed more because she was the Chief's daughter than because she was in any way unattractive, and he wondered whether the attitude caused the solitude or the solitude caused the attitude.

            Bolin suspected the latter.

            The two of them settled on the ground in a spot that was somewhat away from the crowd and they watched the celebration continue on, and as the time passed in relative quiet, Bolin could feel Sun's dourness easing up until she finally stood, said that she was going to get them something to drink, and disappeared for a few minutes. When she returned she handed Bolin a sandstone cup of the same diluted juice they always drank, and they sipped and talked for a while, both of them feeling as outsiders in a place they should've felt at home.

            After a while Bolin felt good and a little lightheaded and a little bit tired, and he stood to return back to the yurt he'd been assigned to sleep for the night. It took him a few minutes on his feet to recognize his slightly altered state of mind, and a few minutes beyond that to understand that the way he felt was the beginning of cactus juice intoxication as it had been explained to him, and when Bolin asked, Sun verified that for events such as these, the communal drinking supply was made of equal parts water and juice.

            "So don't people just go hallucinating all over the place, then?" Bolin asked dumbly as he walked beside Sun back toward the yurts. "If you guys bump it up so much, don't you run into problems?"

            "No, not usually," Sun replied plainly. "Most of the people here have such a tolerance for it that they could drink it at ninety percent or even straight if they had to, and the worst that'll happen is they might get a headache. I know I've had seventy five percent without any issues."

            "Oh."

            "Why?" The look on Sun's face when she stopped and rounded on him was full of mischief. It was the look she gave him when she was about to make fun of him. "Are you feeling it?"

            Bolin nodded despite himself, and to his great surprise, Sun didn't berate him. Instead the mischievous look on her face deepened. After what seemed a moment of contemplation, she hooked her hand through Bolin's elbow and dragged him off course toward the Chieftain's yurt, and she pulled him into the dark.

            Even through the weird stupid haze that had come over him, Bolin felt uncomfortable. Everyone was outside; the building was empty and dark but for tiny rays of moonlight that filtered in through the thin canvas roof. But Sun kept pulling him along, and even when Bolin tugged back, trying to pull away, she persisted.

            "Come on," she insisted, "this is going to be fun."

            "What's going to be fun?"

            "You're a lightweight," Sun explained jovially. "I want to watch you squirm."

            Bolin's stomach properly dropped out, and he lowered his eyes to the darkened floor and fretted while Sun dragged him through the large open room and into a smaller connected area that Bolin recognized as the place where he'd waked after his bout of heat exhaustion. Now he was paying closer attention he could tell that it was some kind of sitting room with a deeply reclined chair that hosted the same hard fiber pillow he'd waked on, and outside of that there were a couple of chairs with comfortable looking pillows and a nicely sized rug for sitting, similar to those in the main chamber.

            Sun deposited Bolin on the reclined chair but he didn't lay back. He was too nervous because now the two of them were alone and he'd not been alone with a girl since he'd left Hokki and Mei's farm, and he scarcely considered Mei to be _a girl_. Sun was his age, or she was close enough to it that it wouldn't be strange for them to be seen together, and Bolin couldn't be certain exactly what she wanted. He couldn't discern her intent. The sleepy fog that weighted down his mind kept him from feeling clearly, and that made him nervous. She'd never acted this way toward him before, and that made him even more nervous.

            "What exactly are you doing?" Bolin asked, and he couldn't keep the nerves from his voice. He couldn't maintain a stoic front in the face of this uncertainty. "What do you mean by _squirm?_ "

            "I want to know what you see," Sun said, and she hustled from the room and returned again with another two cups that Bolin could only assume were full of the same diluted juice that he'd been drinking all night.

            "I don't get it."

            "Everyone sees something different," Sun said. "We've all talked about it before to each other. So when I see things, I see Shibu on the day I found her. Sometimes I see my dad. We see things that make us happy."

            "What?"

            Sun forced one of the cups into his hand, and she downed hers before he even looked into his own. Then she looked at him with an enormous smile and sat herself down on the rug, looked up at him expectantly.

            "I don't understand," Bolin said, and he rested the cup on his knee. "What are you..."

            "If you have enough juice you see things," Sun said, her excitement just as intense as it had been before. "I want to know what you see. You're from the outside and you've seen a lot of things in the world. I want to know what you see."

            Bolin shook his head. "That's a bad idea."

            "You're safe here, and if you're worried about nightmares you don't need to be. No one ever sees anything scary, and let's be honest, what's the scariest thing you've ever seen? A buzzard wasp?"

            Bolin narrowed his eyes. "You don't want to know."

            Sun stopped and the smile dropped off her face. She squinted her eyes at him in a scrutinizing way that made Bolin uncomfortable. "What's the matter? You scared?"

            "No," Bolin snapped, "I'm not afraid."

            "Then you're just a wimp."

            "I'm not a wimp."

            "Prove it, then."

            "No."

            Now Sun sat forward, her elbows on her thighs and her chin on her hands, and she continued staring at Bolin like she was trying to look through him. Then that horrible smirk came back to her, and Bolin's stomach jerked with a spike of nervousness.

            "I'll let you take Shibu," Sun said at last.

            "I already take Shibu," Bolin replied dryly. His head hurt a lot. He laid back.

            "No, that's not what I mean," Sun said. "I saw the way you were looking at the party when they came back. I've seen how sulky and pitiful you've been since my mom forbade you from going out. I'll let you take Shibu."

            Bolin raised his head. He didn't understand, and he didn't know if it was because of the cactus juice messing with his head or if it was because Sun wasn't talking straight. But he didn't say anything. He didn't want to give her any more ammunition for the mocking.

            "You want to go hunting, don't you?" Sun asked, and she waited patiently for Bolin to nod. "And my mother won't allow you out into the field because you aren't strong enough to run with the forwards, and your sand bending is too weird to work a sailer on the flanks. The only hope you've got is if I let you take Shibu onto the field so you can ride her along the forward."

            "Excuse me?"

            "You heard what I said," Sun said, a little hotly now. "You entertain me and I'll let you take Shibu out on the hunt. I get what I want, you get what you want. How can either of us lose?"

            So she'd said what he thought she'd said. She'd offered him the one thing he'd wanted that had been taken away from him, and she'd offered it to him for such an apparently small price.

            "So what, you want me to hallucinate and then I can use your antelope?"

            "Yep. That's it."

            "And it's safe?"

            "Yep. Everyone here has done it, even the kids, but they don't tell their parents."

            "And what am I going to see?"

            Sun threw her hands up noncommittally. "That's the fun of it. You never know. But I've never met anyone who's seen anything bad before. I've never seen anything bad before."

            Bolin narrowed his eyes skeptically, as if asking her what in the world she could possibly have seen.

            "My dad was killed by a sand shark when I was ten. It came up underneath him and bit him clean in half. I watched it from a sailer on the flanks. It's the most horrible memory I have, and I've never seen it once."

            Bolin didn't know what to say. How could he refute her? How could he refuse? If she'd witnessed something as horrible as that and it had never come back to haunt her, it was wholly likely that he'd be fine. It was likely that he wouldn't see Baihe Island. And if it meant that he could go out on the field? If it meant that he could be a part of the whole?

            With an enormous breath, Bolin downed the cup in one and his face scrunched up in disgust. He'd never liked the taste of the juice, but he'd gotten used to it in dilution. This wasn't diluted. This was potent and a little bit disgusting, and for a few seconds after he'd swallowed he wanted to throw it back up, but he clenched his jaw and closed his eyes and willed it to stay down. Of all the things to do in front of Sun, puking would very likely be the most embarrassing.

            "Too strong?" Sun laughed, and when her laughter died away she shifted. "You're probably going to want to lie down."

            Bolin reclined, everything went quiet, and he waited. He kept his eyes closed and he waited to hear something or feel something or see something, and he focused all his attention to his feet to see whether Sun had moved or if he could register any change through her, because certainly if he started acting strangely she would react, too. But nothing happened. He didn't see or hear anything except for Sun moving around and occasionally sighing while she waited. He could hear the sounds of celebration outside, but they were distant and muddled. And he didn't feel anything out of the ordinary either, except perhaps for a pervasive warmth that spread from his stomach outward and seemed to weigh down his limbs with every passing second.

            There was no hallucination here. There were no weird sounds or sights. There was nothing in him except for the overwhelming desire to sleep.

             When Sun woke him, it was with a degree of fear he'd never heard in her before. She shook him hard by the shoulders and cried his name in a frantic, shrill shriek that hurt his ears. He struggled to open his eyes. His whole body felt weighed down and sluggish, and when he sat up his head felt like a brick. He didn't remember when he'd dozed off and reality came back to him slowly, but once he was up and his eyes had opened and he managed to focus on the room around him, all the fatigue went away in a snap of sudden understanding.

            The world outside was on fire. The sky was red and black with smoke, and Bolin could hear the crackling of the flame and the rushing around of people. Sun looked terrified.

            Bolin didn't need her to tell him what was going on. He already knew. He'd seen it before. The firebenders had followed him and the firebenders had attacked, and once again the people who'd adopted him into their community were in danger. Once again those people were suffering because he was there. His mere presence was a death sentence.

            Bolin pushed Sun roughly to the side and bolted from the room, all awkward on his feet and feeling queasy as he ran. And the closer he came to the yurt's entrance the louder the noises became until he broke into the night and the sensations overwhelmed him. Red sparks flew from the fire and the smell of burning _something_ hit him so hard he could've fallen down. People were all over, in groups so thick he couldn't see through them to tell who was an ally and who was an enemy.

            The same way as it had done in Gaoling, the sight of the fire and commotion made Bolin panic, but this time he didn't run. This time he wasn't going to run. He remembered how awful he'd felt when he'd come back to himself after the explosions in the Earth Rumble Arena and how pitiful he'd thought himself to be because all he could do in the face of imminent danger was panic and run away. If he ever hoped to stay here, he had to protect the people.

            He spotted them, red flashes that must have been firebenders in their disgusting Society uniforms, darting around near the flame, and he took off toward them with abandon. Driven by the noises he heard coming out of the people and by Sun's frantic screaming behind him, by the crackling of the fire that hummed beneath it all, Bolin rushed ahead and pulled earth from the ground. He yanked a column of sand left-handed and chucked it with all his might into the fray. It made the firebenders stop and turn to him, but he couldn't see their faces for the bright firelight. They looked as silhouettes against the red, but he could see enough to understand that he'd stunned them, and he wasn't about to let them fight back.

            He drew forth the lava.

            It responded as it always had, even after so long, and he whipped a thick coil of the stuff into the firebenders. He didn't think twice about doing it, either, because this was his home now and he had to protect it with his life. He'd abandoned too many homes to give this one up, too. If he gave this one up, he'd never find a home again.

            The firebenders dispersed and ran off. Behind him, he could hear people screaming, and when he rounded to help he saw again the flashes of red against the firelight, except now the whole place was in chaos. Now there were people running at him and people running away from him and people running without any apparent destination at all. The crying he heard was very real, and somewhere off in the distance he could still hear Sun yelling his name. It was the same way Opal and Asami had yelled his name. Her voice had taken on the same terrified tremble that Opal's had, the same high pitched squeaking quality and the same stammering stupor, but he couldn't tell what she was saying or from where she was saying it. He could only hear her voice and hear the horror it conveyed, and that, too, drove him to act.

            He lunged forward, tearing sand from the ground two-handed now, and he liquefied it as he hurled it forward. He did so blindly. He did it wildly. It didn't seem to matter what he hit, because the firebenders were closing in on him fast and there was nothing he could do except to try and hold them back, to try and dispatch as many of them as he could before they killed him, too.

            It wasn't until one of the assailants closed in that Bolin hesitated. He'd seen the person coming on, had seen them hurtling themselves toward him, and he'd slung a sizable stream of lava toward them that somehow didn't hit the mark. He tried again, more desperate this time, sweeping the sand with his right arm and managing its liquefication with his left, and the shards of strange looking obsidian rock flew straight on through the body but didn't seem to cause any damage.

            Then the person passed through him like a ghost, and Bolin stopped dead with a horrible frigid dread expanding in his chest. He stood there and stared ahead, confused by the rushing and the panic and the fact that he'd somehow missed the mark when his target had been less than ten yards away. He didn't understand; he didn't know how he'd not been knocked over.

            Then he _was_ knocked over, and his impact with the ground marked the end of any manner of reason. He hadn't seen the person who'd landed the hit. He hadn't actually registered the fact that he'd been knocked down until he felt the sand on his face and understood that it wasn't the spray off the wind or a poorly shot sand strike. Someone had tackled him, and their weight pressed him into the soft ground.

            He fought. He fought wildly, and his panic lent him enough unnatural strength that he managed to buck whoever had pinned him off, but before he could gain his feet there was another, then another. Their weight pressed him awkwardly down until there was enough piled on top of him that he couldn't move at all, until his squirming and flailing pulled painfully at his shoulder and sent a lightning shock of pain through to his wrist.

            The sensation made him stop.

            That sensation was the first instance of pain he'd felt since Sun had waked him, since he'd run out into the fire and started lobbing lava at the attackers. He'd not been hurt when he'd been knocked down and they hadn't hurt him while subduing him. Either these were the gentlest firebenders in the world, or Bolin had made a grievous error.

            As he lay there, Bolin listened to the shrieking quiet down and he felt through the ground the slowing of the footfalls as people stopped fleeing. If he focused very carefully he could feel Sun in the noise and he could still hear her voice very faintly somewhere behind.

            After a time the pressure lifted from his back and his legs, but Bolin kept lying there racking his brain to understand what had gone wrong and who had been attacking the commune. He laid there trying to make sense of it, and the longer he stayed the more he knew: It had been a dream. He'd hallucinated it all. He'd been seeing things that didn't really exist and hadn't been threatening the commune at all. But had his throwing of the lava been part of the dream? Had his bending been real? Had he just attacked the people with whom he'd been living? Had he just ruined his future with them?           

            He had.

            It was the only thing that made any sense.

            Bolin couldn't be sure if the panic had ever truly left him after he'd been forced to the ground, and it didn't particularly matter. The swell of terror that washed over him compounded whatever panic was left perfectly. It swept him up so quickly and so forcefully that he felt his feet and his hands go cold and numb, his insides compressed into a painful knot as the horrible combination of realization and panic expanded inside him. It was the same way it had been before. It was the same feeling he'd had after Baihe Island when all he'd wanted to do was jump from Oogi's basket and disappear because everything he'd thought had been a dream had been pure, unfettered reality. The weight of the truth made it hard to breathe and there were too many conflicting things inside of him to react otherwise. He couldn't see himself in any of it. He couldn't feel himself in the earth. He'd been doing so well, and now he'd ruined it all.

            A surge of energy shot through Bolin's middle and into his limbs, and without thinking he scrambled to gain his feet. He had to run away. He had to get away. He couldn't face the consequences. He couldn't do all of this all over again.

            It was too much movement too fast. He couldn't even stand. The moment he'd begun moving his head began swimming, a bolt of blind agony shot through his side, and just before he fell back to the ground in a heap he realized that he'd been holding his breath.

           

 

            The first thing Bolin recognized was warmth, but it wasn't the oppressive warmth of the desert or the artificial warmth of electric heat. It wasn't the warmth of a body or blanket or coat. It was a weird, internal warmth that radiated from his chest and outward through every part of him. He felt on fire.

            He remembered the fire.

            Bolin bolted upright and he opened his eyes to familiarity. He opened his eyes to the same room in the Chieftain's yurt where he'd been treated for every malady he'd come down with since his arrival, the same room where Sun had given him that horrible hallucinogen, but unlike every other time he'd waked here, this time he was alone.

            "You stupid, stupid girl! What in the world could you possibly have been thinking! He could've killed all of us, and why? So you could _have fun?_ So you could have a laugh?"

            It was Yan. She was yelling.

            "I can't believe you'd be so selfish! I can't believe you'd put us all in that kind of danger just so you could feed your ego! What were you trying to do this time, feel superior? Were you trying to make a fool of him to make yourself feel better?"

            If Bolin listened closely he could make out tiny whimpers beyond Yan's yelling.

            "If he hadn't attacked who he did this whole place could've been _leveled!_ "

            Bolin stood and wobbled and recognized two very distinct, very sharp pains. The first, the obvious, was his shoulder, which he imagined he'd landed on weirdly or had tweaked the wrong way when he'd bent the earth so recklessly. It was an expected pain, one that he'd gotten used to in one way or another because it'd been with him most every day since he'd initially injured it, except now it was a little more acute than usual. The second pain was the one that concerned him, and felt more like a discomfort than an actual pain. It felt like he'd pulled a muscle somewhere in the left of his chest, like everything had tightened up and caught on his ribs.

            His head was pounding.

            Still, he forced himself to walk the few yards to the open door leading into the yurt's primary chamber, and he watched while Yan unleashed all her motherly wrath on Sun, who sat in the floor with her head in her hands. She didn't look to be crying, but every once in a while her shoulders gave a quiet shudder that made it seem like she'd been doing so very recently.

            "You know," Yan never stopped her admonishment, and now Bolin could see clearly that she was moving about the room, pacing around the sitting area and waving her arms angrily while Sun didn't even watch her, "I expected you to mistreat him. Don't think for half a minute that I've not noticed that. But this goes well beyond what I expected, and you goaded him into it! You told him he could go out! You understand that I forbade him from that for _very good reasons_ , don't you? I forbade him from going out because it would be ridiculously dangerous! What if he collapses on the field? How many times does he have to faint before you understand..."

            Bolin conspicuously cleared his throat, and Yan stopped her ranting at once. She stopped everything, and her eyes snapped to the doorway with a fury. Sun looked up, too, and she was all red-eyed and pale. She looked desperately afraid. She felt afraid, too, and so did Yan for that matter. But Sun's fear was pure and Yan's was mixed with disappointment and anger and something else he couldn't put his finger on. 

            "Well, it's a good thing you're not dead," Yan said dryly to Bolin, and then she turned to Sun. "Get out of here. I'll find you when I'm ready for you to come back. I don't care where you go, but get out."

            Sun stood and didn't look at Bolin at all before she hurried from the room, her eyes on the ground and her hands clasped together at her front. She sniffled once on the way out, but then she was gone and Bolin couldn't feel her any more.

            "You're not innocent in this, either," Yan said, her tone just as angry now that Sun had left, and she approached him with narrowed eyes and furrowed brows. "You consented? You agreed?"

            Bolin didn't know what to say, but Yan's tirade had him on his heels already.

            "Go, sit down," Yan snapped, and when she got to him she grasped him firmly by the shoulders to turn him around, presumably to march him back to the chair upon which he'd been lying. But Bolin flinched and she let go. It was more than a flinch, really, because the pain seared through his arm all white hot again, so blindingly intense that he went from standing upright to leaning weak against the door's frame, and he didn't know when he'd stumbled.

            Yan didn't seem to care. She grasped him again, this time by his upper arms, and she pushed him insistently back to the chair.

            "What happened?" Bolin asked dumbly when he'd sat. "I..." He stopped and watched Yan's expression as she sat opposite him and leveled a hard gaze on him. Everything about her was making him uncomfortable. He swallowed hard and cleared his throat awkwardly. "I fell asleep," he reasoned hopefully, "and I had this crazy dream that I..."

            "You weren't _dreaming_ , you idiot. You destroyed half our commons and almost killed two of our best hunters."

            After a few seconds spent stammering and blinking, Bolin could only say, "Oh."

            "And Sun told me that you did it willingly? She told me that you did it because she promised you _Shibu?_ She told you that you could take her antelope and defy my orders because you showed her what you saw?"

            Bolin nodded. He felt ten years old. He felt younger than that, even, and he felt very, very small and very, very stupid.

            "Well, count your lucky stars, young man, because you and my daughter's stupidity didn't kill anyone." Yan drew a deep breath and heaved it back out, and when she dropped her forehead onto her fist, she seemed to deflate a little bit. "I didn't know your lavabending was so potent."

            For a second, Bolin considered apologizing, but then he figured it would be best to keep quiet. He didn't want to do anything that might make her angry again now it seemed she was calming.

            "I guess it worked out well enough," she grumbled so quietly that Bolin had to strain to hear, "because they want you now. Toma told me himself after he brought you in. He said that there was no way he'd pass up on someone who could bend so powerfully with such little practice."

            Bolin wasn't sure if he should feel disgusted or proud. It was somewhere in between. Worse was that he could remember only little snippets of what had really happened, things like the fire and the fear he'd felt. There were no concrete images. It was all latent feelings.

            "So we're going to have to figure out some way to get you out there. He wants you at forward flank."

            "I don't know what you're talking about," Bolin said, just as stupidly as he'd done before.

            "You're going out with the hunting parties. That's what I'm talking about." Yan snapped at him, her voice dripping venom and sarcasm and anger. "So congratulations, you got what you wanted. I hope you're happy."

            He wasn't.

            Yan and Bolin sat in silence for a while, and Bolin watched while she worked to calm herself. He'd never seen someone sit the way she was, all straight backed with her eyes closed. It looked like she was meditating, and the deliberateness of her breathing made it seem that she was concentrating deeply.

            "We've got three issues," Yan said at last, and there was no longer any trace of anger in her voice. "Foremost, we've got to figure out how you're going to run with the forwards without killing yourself. We'll start by getting you some better clothes, something more suited to the heat, and we'll have to see about your arm. I noticed you favoring it when you were going crazy. But I think the most important thing for us will be to get whatever that was under control. And the only way you're going to get that under control is if you tell me exactly what the heck happened out there last night."

            That was the problem, Bolin thought. He didn't really _know_ what happened. Yet if the feeling in his chest and the memories of the horror were an indication, he could be pretty confident in guessing.

            "I think I panicked."

            "Is that a problem with you?"

            Bolin didn't want to come straight out and admit it, and for a second he thought about denying it or skating around it somehow. But Yan was a truth seer, so even circling the truth would make her suspicious. There was nothing for him to do except nod and say very firmly, "Yes."

            "Tell me more."

            So Bolin explained. He went through the story the same as he'd done with Hokki, except Yan did far more talking than Hokki did. She pressed him for details in which Hokki had seemed disinterested. Where Hokki had allowed him to gloss over the debacle in Fire Fountain City, she made him focus on it, asked him to recount how he felt and what he did immediately after he'd crushed the first round of people. She asked him why he continued throwing lava. She asked him what had motivated him to use lethal force when it was wholly likely that he could've dealt with the situation in more peaceful ways. She pressed him about his recurring nightmares and about how he'd repeatedly lashed out at the people he loved. She made him recount every panic attack and angry outburst he'd had since the collapse.

            The conversation on the whole made Bolin nervous all over again, and without thinking about it he found himself groping at his ribs where Opal had hit him and waiting for the drumming to start back up. Could it be that simply talking about what'd happened would make him freak out all over again? Was he really that sensitive about it?

            "Well, that's your problem," Yan said after Bolin had concluded the story, "you're dwelling on what you did. Don't misunderstand me, Bolin, you should feel awful. You should repent for what you did. But you shouldn't allow it to control you the way it is, because if you continue allowing yourself to relive those moments, you're going to end up killing someone else, and you might not mean to next time."

            "I don't understand," Bolin said. And it wasn't even true. He understood exactly what she'd said but couldn't reconcile her opinion with what Hokki had told him about the exact same string of events. Hokki said that Bolin had done the right thing by doing what he felt he needed to in order to get everyone out of that forsaken place alive, yet Yan was suggesting he'd been undeniably in the wrong.

            "We have to get your panic under control. And you said you'd had problems with anger, yes? We'll have to get that under control as well. I make no guarantee that we'll be able to cure the problem, it's not a problem that really _can_ be cured, but I'll do what I can to try to help you."

            "Why?" Bolin's confusion deepened. As far as he was concerned, Yan was talking in contradictions. Why would she want to help him if she thought he should repent? Why would she help him if he was an awful person who'd done wrong?

            "Because suffering shouldn't lead to suffering," Yan said flatly, pointedly. There was no room for argument here. "Do you want to kill more people?"

            Bolin shook his head. Of course he didn't. That she might think he wanted to made him want little more than to break down on the spot. He'd done so much to _avoid_ the possibility of lashing out like that that he'd inadvertently destroyed his life. He'd run away to avoid hurting people. He'd hurt people to avoid hurting them even worse.

            "Then we need to teach you to cope," Yan said gently. It seemed that she'd taken note of his discomfort. "I'm not saying that you're going to be able to forget about it and I'm not even saying that you're going to stop having nightmares. That part of your life will always be there. What I'm saying is that you need to learn to deal with those feelings."

            "I can deal with them," Bolin argued. She'd put him on the defensive. "I've been dealing with them for months."

            The smirk Yan offered him was condescending. It was the same motherly smirk that Su had offered him once upon a time what felt like eons ago. "No," she said firmly, "you haven't. You might think you've been, but you haven't. Panicking and running away from a situation doesn't mean you're dealing with anything, it just means you're running away."

            She wasn't wrong, and the truth stung a bit.

            "You need to learn how to work through your problems," Yan continued, and Bolin was suddenly reminded very strongly of Katara's wisdom. "You need to take the feelings you've got one by one and work through them. You need to learn how to accept them, reason with them, and let them go."

            It didn't sound like a bad idea when she put it that way.

            "So there we go," Yan said with a sigh. "There are our goals. We'll get you trained up and in shape to go out with Toma as soon as possible, even though I have no idea how it's going to happen. We'll make sure your shoulder won't give you trouble on the hunt. And we'll work on your… Personal issues."

            She'd placed a strange emphasis on the phrase that made Bolin's stomach jerk. It was a diplomatic way to refer to such horrible problems.

            "But I need to make you aware of something in the meantime," Yan continued, and now her voice took on a different tone. Now she sounded a little concerned. Her tone was one of warning. "People are scared of you. Sun is terrified of you, which I guess means that she won't bully you so much anymore. But everyone else is afraid of you, too, except for Toma and his party. They might even be afraid of you, for all I know, but they see enough potential in you to take the risk."

            "I'm sorry," Bolin said pathetically. "I didn't know I was going to--"

            "I don't want you to apologize. I want you to go earn back the respect of your community. I don't know how you're going to do it, but they used to trust you and you've burned that trust to the ground. Don't be offended if people don't want anything to do with you from now on."

            Bolin nodded. He could deal with people shunning him. He'd dealt with it all before, from people he cared about far more than he cared about the relative strangers in the commune. As far as Bolin was concerned, if it meant he might learn to control his impulses and make progress in a recovery he'd believed had all but stalled, being an outcast was a small price to pay.


	52. Found

            Korra wasn't good at lying and she knew it. She'd never been good at lying and she'd never been good at acting, but that never stopped her from trying. She'd done it after she'd been poisoned. She'd done it when she tried to fight against Kuvira and lost. She'd done it in the wake of the collapse. She'd done it after Bolin used her and abandoned her. And every time she got caught. But still, Korra would always try; as long as she tried there might be a tiny chance that no one would notice anything was wrong.

            So it went when the letter arrived.

            She hadn't been expecting the news, and when Jinora read the letter aloud at the dinner table with Tenzin and Asami and everyone else to hear, Korra sat stunned and disbelieving. She couldn't have heard it correctly. It was impossible.

            It took a few seconds after the words came out of Jinora's mouth for the message to register completely, because the joy with which Jinora conveyed such a horrible message didn't compute. It didn't fit. The news was terrible.

            Bolin was alive.

            Korra forced herself to run the phrase through her mind until it finally made sense, and with each repetition a dread grew inside her until it burst out in a fit of sadness that she hoped at once she might pass off as unrestrained joy. Everyone else had been initially happy at the news. Asami teared up a little bit, and for the first time in her life, Korra managed to feign happiness successfully because everyone else was so thoroughly distracted.

            Ten months. Ten months with no word and no leads and no sign that Bolin existed anywhere on the face of the planet. For all anyone knew, he'd fallen straight out of existence never to be heard from again, and Korra was oddly fine with that prospect. Korra welcomed his absence more than she'd welcomed anything in her life, because his absence meant that she could begin to forget. His absence meant she could begin to heal.

            He'd ruined her. The night before he left, he ruined her, and it took months afterward for her to begin to hope to move on. The memory of his abandonment permeated everything she did, impacted every decision she made, because above all things Korra began to feel afraid that everyone else would abandon her the same way that Bolin had done. It became a persistent paranoia from which she couldn't seem to run away. And if anyone found out what had happened between her and Bolin and how it was affecting her so seriously, they would abandon her even quicker. She knew they would.

            Mako and Su were the only two who ever knew what happened, and if Korra had had her way, neither of them would ever have found out. But they did by virtue of Mako's keen eye for inconsistency, and they'd run Korra through the wringer in the immediate aftermath. But then they relented. Then they left her alone to try to work through it. Once Korra returned to Republic City from Zaofu, Mako had asked her only once if she was all right or if she wanted to discuss the matter, and when Korra responded quite firmly in the negative, he made no more mention of it. She wasn't sure if he said something to Su, but Su never said anything about it again, either.

            And Korra had worked through it. Or she thought she had. For a few weeks she lost herself in the Republic City investigation, in catching up with all she'd missed while she was absent. She lost herself in the information that Mako and Lin shared with her about the Democratic Society of Firebenders and what was their immediate plan of action. She lost herself in discussions with President Raiko and Firelord Izumi about exactly what the Avatar's role should be, about how she might help rebuild trust between firebending citizens and the rest of the world in a time when trust was nothing more than an empty word. And then she lost herself in her work. She spent every waking hour of every day pouring herself into that reconstruction.

            Eventually her distraction allowed her to distance herself from feelings of awkwardness and fear of personal relationships so that when Asami approached her some time later about trying to rekindle the relationship that they'd so perfectly ruined, Korra accepted without much thought. Of course, she could handle it. Asami was her friend and Asami was a person that Korra loved above all others. Asami had been her aspiration. Asami wouldn't betray her. Asami would help her to heal. She had to believe that she could heal, because what good was a life without intimacy?

             Korra repeated the litany to herself over and over, that Asami was safe and Asami was kind. She told herself that Asami loved her, and Asami told her that Asami loved her, and Mako even told her that Asami loved her, but in the end, it hadn't mattered. As she feared it would, there came a time when Korra's relationship with Asami built to the point of _that kind_ of intimacy, and the moment Asami had laid hands on her body, Korra broke in a way she never believed she would. She broke the same way Bolin used to break. It was as though their joining had infected her with the very same issues of panic and insecurity that Bolin faced himself, like all the worst parts of him had taken possession of her body and mind, and as much as she wanted to convince herself otherwise, Korra didn't know how to work through it.

            She'd scared Asami senseless with the way she reacted, because until the moment Asami's hand brushed the space between Korra's legs everything had seemed to be going smoothly. But the moment Korra registered the touch, it was as though a switch flipped and any romantic feelings that Korra had been feeling disappeared, and she'd scrambled in a terrified jumble of arms and legs to propel herself away from Asami's gentle touch so quickly and so aimlessly that she'd fallen clean off the bed. Asami had laughed at first, believing that Korra had been little more than startled by the contact, but when Korra didn't get up off the floor and instead began sobbing hysterically into her hands, all that changed.

            Korra never told Asami what had gone wrong, how she'd associated Asami's touch with Bolin's touch, and how that connection had persisted through everything they did from holding hands to kissing on the cheek. Korra never told Asami that the regression in their relationship was the result of her inability to cope with a traumatic event that she'd never admitted to herself was traumatic. She left Asami's questions unanswered until all that was left was assumption, and even then, Korra didn't steer her in the right direction.

            But that all had been months ago. That all had happened in the winter when things were tense and dead anyway, when life was cold and the world was stressful and all Korra could focus on was the Democratic Society of Firebenders and being the Avatar and worrying that she might never be able to enjoy intimate contact again. The coming of spring changed all of that, and like the opening of flower blooms, Korra opened, too, until she felt comfortable holding hands and kissing and lying together with Asami in a silence of contentment, until she managed to push to the back of her mind the horrible thing that Bolin had done to her. She pushed it all back until Bolin was little more than a fleeting thought every once in a great while, because after so long, no one really mentioned him outside of occasional mutterings and reports from Jinora regarding her searches. Even Mako stopped slipping, because whenever Mako mentioned his brother it seemed only to depress him. But no matter how far Korra pushed the thought of Bolin away, no matter how far the idea of him went, Asami never made another move. Asami never pushed any farther, and Korra didn't ask her to. Korra hoped it might someday happen organically.

            There were a few months that Korra felt like herself, like she was on the upswing, when she felt as if she was returning to normal, but then the letter came and threw everything out of balance all over again.

            The letter came from a man named Hokki, a farmer, apparently, who lived somewhere in the mountains vaguely northwest of Lanxi, a town that Korra had heard of in passing but wouldn't have been able to point out on a map if she was paid. The letter explained that Bolin had come strolling into their village in the last couple weeks of summer, had asked for a job, and then he'd stayed there for a long time. He'd stayed there nearly four months, as the letter read, and had left them just as the first of the heavy winter snows began to fall to head north into Ai Da He Province to seek out a commune of sand benders.

            The letter went on to make a number of other strange observations. He mentioned how he'd not known Bolin to be an earthbender until just before Bolin left, because Bolin hadn't bent a single pebble from the moment he arrived. In fact, Bolin had told everyone outright that he was a nonbender. Hokki explained that he thought it was because Bolin was afraid of something, but he'd never known what. Then, Hokki recounted an event in which Bolin panicked at the sight of a cow pig slaughter and how that made Hokki believe that the fear was drawn from something traumatic that had happened in Bolin's past. Then Hokki explained how Bolin had verified it to him in the end. But if Hokki's account was complete, Bolin had left out some important details.

            In the end, the old man had little in the way of negative things to say about Bolin. The letter was actually very positive, because despite all the shortcomings Hokki saw in Bolin when he arrived, Bolin had somehow managed to work through them to build his strength and practice his reading and his writing and learn how to socialize with people, even if he remained so thoroughly awkward with the girls in town that a lot of the villagers believed him to have a preference for men. The note ended with what seemed to be a heartfelt apology from the old farmer because he'd waited so long after the fact to send word, but even then, he'd gone on to explain how he felt like Bolin wasn't ready to return home, how he thought Bolin still needed some time to figure himself out. He hoped that Bolin was ready now, and suggested that if anyone was thinking of going to the sand bender commune that they should take the Avatar as a matter of course, because the leaders of the commune were notoriously picky about who they allowed in, and anyone other than the Avatar could very well be turned away at the gate.

            None of that mattered to Korra. She didn't care and she didn't listen to anything beyond the first few sentences because in the end she'd been to stunned to hear that someone knew where Bolin was. Someone knew where he'd gone and had responded to their flyers, and that was terrible. But Bolin had departed from that village months ago and Hokki hadn't heard from him since. Even if he'd arrived at the commune, he might not have stayed. In short, there was no telling where he was.

            It was hard for Korra to imagine that Bolin might be somewhere out in the world. Most everyone had given up hope of finding him after the first four months of his absence: Jinora and Ikki's trip to Lanxi had been a last-ditch effort, had been completely incidental. They'd been down near the Eastern Air Temple, scouring the islands south of the continental Earth Nation, and the town had been little more than a pit stop on the way back home where they'd decided to do a little questioning and drop off a few flyers because they were already there and may as well take the time. They'd certainly never expected to find any promising leads.

            Then there was Mako, who couldn't give up hope as a matter of familial investment, because he simply couldn't give up as a matter of principle. Mako had clung to every lead they'd found, even after everyone else began dismissing them as short-sighted attempts to collect the five-hundred-yuan reward, but he'd never gone out looking because Beifong forbade him from doing so. He'd been too busy besides, and for him to leave Republic City at all was impractical.

            He'd been working too much with Beifong and the Republic City Police on the investigation into the Democratic Society of Firebenders, had been in close contact the same as Korra had with Firelord Izumi and President Raiko so that three months after arriving home he'd been promoted and given his own office in the precinct. He spent most of every hour of every day there, and occasionally spent the night drooling in his sleep on piles of paperwork received from all corners of the world. The case had, in effect, become his, and as enormous as it was, he had little time for much else, not even Bolin.

            More than that, though, Mako had apparently graduated from being merely a detective to being something of a diplomat if only by virtue of his dealings with the Firelord and the various governors of the newly formed Earth Nation. He talked with such people daily, if not several times a day, collecting and disseminating pertinent information and compiling it all into files which he could then send out with lower-ranked detectives who would do all the footwork in investigating, then report back their findings for Mako to compile all over again. It was more than a full-time job, and it left Mako exhausted. He'd not been there at all when they'd received the letter, and it had taken three days before he'd been able to get away long enough to make it to Air Temple Island.

            Korra made Jinora read the letter to Mako because she couldn't stomach doing it herself, and Mako had displayed a reaction that Korra hadn't expected. First, he'd sat there, wide-eyed and stupefied with the same look on his face that Bolin had worn when Lin misinformed him about Mako's death. But then Mako's face cracked into an enormous, genuine smile, and he'd turned very red and dropped his face into his hands on the spot and kept it there for a long time that Korra was sure he spent crying.

            The honeymoon didn't last for long. By the time Mako called for a meeting to discuss the matter as a whole, everyone's initial reactions of joy and hope had dulled. By the time they all sat around the table for tea in the dining room on Air Temple Island, Korra could tell just by looking around that everyone, even Jinora and Tenzin, were having their doubts. But Mako was the first one to say anything, and what he said absolutely confirmed Korra's suspicion.

            "Do you think he's actually out there?"

            The words came out of Mako all quiet and contemplative, as though he was making a statement more than he was asking a question. He'd been staring into his teacup for a long time before asking, and even after he'd spoken he didn't look up. Korra was glad he hadn't. He would've been met with expressions of skepticism and worry.

            "The real question is how we're going to act on the news in this letter," Tenzin said with a clear of his throat and a sip at his tea. "It would seem irresponsible to ignore such a promising lead, but it's going to take time to prepare an airship and head into the desert."

            "We don't even know if he's there still," Asami said. "The way that letter reads, this farmer hasn't seen Bolin in months. He might not even be there. He might not even have arrived."

            Korra read between the lines, but she didn't speak to fill in the spaces. Everyone had to have understood Asami's meaning, the part of her statement that went unsaid: Bolin might not have arrived because he might have died. He'd been in such terrible shape when he left Zaofu that the notion of him wandering around the desert in the dead of winter seemed hopeless.

            "We can't just ignore it," Mako said.

            "Well, first we should decide who will go if we decide to pursue this. Then we can work around the schedules."

            Tenzin always had been good at planning.

            "Well, Korra pretty much has to go," Jinora reasoned. "The letter said that the sand benders wouldn't let just anybody in, but if the Avatar shows up, they'll almost _have_ to talk to us."

            Korra's stomach seized up. She clenched her hands in her lap and stared at her untouched tea.

            "And I'll go," Asami added, her tone a bit brighter. "I'll prepare the airship and get all the provisions ready. I can try to get a frequency so we can call the commune on the radio and let them know we're on the way."

            "If they even have a radio," Tenzin said. Everyone looked at him, and when he realized this, he shifted almost uncomfortably in his seat. "My understanding is that sand benders live fairly primitive lives. They make a point to avoid most technology unless it's vital for their survival. I'm not even sure that they use refrigerators."

            "Sounds pretty miserable," Mako mumbled.

            The table went quiet for a few minutes, and Korra thought for a few of them about trying to dismiss herself from the trip. There were feasible excuses, after all. She, Mako, and Beifong had been making ridiculous headway in the fight against the Society. Mako and Lin had squeezed incredible amounts of information out of their captive combustion bender, and that information had allowed them to send spies into various encampments, get valuable information about planned raids and attacks so that the last major catastrophe had been a rogue squad's assault on Gaoling, and that had been months ago. That had been right after Bolin left.

            More than that, they had promising prospects. They had reasonable ideas about where the major strongholds were now that Fire Fountain City was defunct. They could make educated guesses about which of those places would house the most captives, which would house the most soldiers, which would serve as supplies distributors. With the exception of a few missing pieces, the puzzle was so well put together that all that was really left to do was plan their counter-raids on the Society's major population centers to free captives and try to convince what brainwashed firebenders they found to give up. And what firebenders they couldn't convince, they would arrest.

            "So Korra and Asami will go," Tenzin recapped after a few minutes' silence.

            "If Beifong will let me, I'll go," Mako said, some of the brightness returning to his voice, too. Now he perked up a bit, raised his eyes from his teacup to look hopefully at the others.

            "Beifong won't let you go," Asami said. She'd said it with finality, too, because everyone knew that Lin wasn't going to allow Mako to go anywhere. She'd be upset to hear Korra was going, for that matter.

            "What about Opal?" Jinora asked. "I bet she'd be happy to go look. She hasn't come out on a search with us since the new year, and Zaofu is on the way, kind of."

            Now that Korra thought about it, she wasn't sure that anyone had called Zaofu to inform them of the letter at all. If they were to telephone Opal and tell her that there was a lead, she'd probably faint on the spot. That or she'd be unfathomably angry that no one had called her sooner.

            Korra recognized then just how long it had been since she'd been in Zaofu, since she'd last seen Su or Opal or any of the Beifongs, for that matter. It'd been a couple weeks after Bolin left, and those weeks had been so awkward and so terrible that Korra hadn't wanted to go back. Su had monitored her more closely than she'd ever been monitored before, even after she'd been poisoned. Every day without fail she'd be fed in the morning and watched for signs of sickness, and every day she spent virtually every minute under Su's watchful eye while they waited for her menses to kick in. It'd been such a gross violation of her privacy that Korra wasn't sure that she'd be able to face Su again without succumbing to embarrassment and devolving into a crying heap.

            And Opal had never known a thing. As far as Korra knew, she'd never suspected a thing, either. She'd believed Korra to have been upset about Bolin's absence, nothing more, and while Korra wasn't sure what Su mentioned to Opal, she was certain that it hadn't been anything about her and Bolin's exploit.

            Either way, Korra might've been less thrilled about spending time with Opal than she was about seeing Bolin again.

            The rest of the planning proceeded without Korra's input. She sat silent, listening vaguely as the rest of them discussed timelines and potential routes, how they would stop at Zaofu and have a rest before piloting their airship into the desert proper. Asami suggested a stop at the Misty Palms Oasis to ask around and then, depending on what information they found, head up north.

            No one seemed to notice Korra's conspicuous silence, or no one said or did anything about it to indicate they had. So, they all left the table in their time, each with a task set before them to prepare: Mako would speak with Beifong about the matter to see if he would be allowed to go, and he would clear it with her to allow Korra to go regardless; Asami would prepare the airship, because no matter what happened someone was going to be following up on the matter; Tenzin would contact Suyin and let her know about the development, and he would ask if Opal would be willing to go with them to investigate. Korra was the only one without a job, and she imagined that it was because by the time she brought herself back into the conversation, everything had already been accounted for.

            She retired to her room and sat on her bed, her body feeling very heavy and cold with an ever-increasing dread. It came to be so much that she had to lie down, and she curled into a ball atop the blankets and stared at the wall. She examined the patterns in the paint, the dips and grooves, a minute crack here and there, because she hoped that doing so would help keep her mind from wandering back to the immediate: Bolin was out there, and in the event they found him, he'd be coming home.

            When her door opened a little while later, Korra didn't move. She assumed it was either Tenzin come to report the outcome of his phone calls or it was Pema coming to see why she'd not come out for lunch or dinner. It wasn't like Korra skipped meals often, so Pema checking up wasn't unexpected.

            But it wasn't either of them. It was Mako.

            Korra thought he'd gone home, and when he sat at the foot of her bed she said as much. She was thankful that her voice didn't give away her mood. In the wake of all the drama and nonsense, she'd gotten pretty good at keeping her tone even when it came down to it.

            "I needed to talk with Tenzin for a few minutes," Mako said in response, "because Beifong wants me to contact some guy from the northern Earth Kingdom about sending a group in to investigate his province and she said that Tenzin knew him."

            "And?"

            "Tenzin said he'd make a few calls for me."

            Silence.

            If there was one thing that changed more drastically than anything else in Mako's absence, it was the nature of the silence he kept. Before, it had always been a little awkward because Mako himself had always been a little awkward, because his silences used to be the result of his not knowing what to say in difficult situations. Anymore his silences tended toward contemplation. His silences were purposeful yet somehow leisurely. It was as though he was no longer afraid to take his time in drawing his conclusions and deciding how to articulate himself.

            It was like he'd learned how to interact with people.

            "I don't think I need to remind you of the elephant rhino in the room," Mako said after a time.

            Korra stayed quiet.

            "I understand why you're not exactly _happy_ about all of this," Mako continued, unabashed, "and I understand why you were so quiet when we were discussing it."

            There was a pause. Korra was certain Mako wanted her to say something, that he expected her to have some kind of response, but she didn't. She stayed quiet, and his comfortable silence blanketed her again. She could've sat in it forever.

            "But I need to know one thing," Mako said, and it came out as though the silence had never existed, like he was picking up straight from his last thought. "Are you going to be able to handle this? Are you going to be okay?"

            Korra sat up. She was certain the look she leveled on Mako was one of surprised puzzlement, but she'd meant it to be neutral and unaffected. She stammered dumbly, and Mako took the hint. 

            "What I mean is that I know you've been trying to work through what happened between you and Bo, and I just want to make sure you're ready. I want to make sure that when he comes home..." Mako paused. He looked at his hands and his brow furrowed as if he'd confused himself, but then he shook his head and made the correction. "I want to make sure that _if_ he comes home, you'll be okay."

            Unsure what to say, Korra nodded.

            "I'm being serious," Mako said, but the tone of his voice made it impossible for Korra to talk all over again. He sounded like Tenzin, stern but gentle and with the same unwillingness to put up with nonsense answers and dodges. It was a tone that said he would accept nothing less than the truth, except Korra didn't know what the truth was.

            "Mako," Korra tried to make her voice as mollifying as she could, "I appreciate that you're thinking about me, but..."

            "Look, Korra, I'm not messing around here. Asami doesn't know what happened. Tenzin doesn't know what happened. _Nobody_ knows what happened except for you and me, and if Bolin comes home and all you can do is cry and carry on about it, people are going to find out. I'm just trying to make sure that you understand that. I'm trying to make sure that you're prepared enough to put on whatever show you've been putting on for Asami because she's not stupid. She _knows_ something happened but she doesn't know what. She's asked me about it. She asked me about it _a lot_ after we came back here."

            "What did you tell her?" Korra asked, her voice all meek and quiet.

            "I lied, of course. I told her that I had no idea what happened to make you so moody. Actually, I'm pretty sure I blamed it on your period or something but I can't remember. It was a long time ago."

            Korra nodded. She understood. It'd been a brilliant cover-up on Mako's part, such a simplistic and stereotypically male response to an otherwise complex problem seemed only fitting. It was absolutely an answer that Mako would've given before all of this nonsense with the Society, but somehow Korra understood that present-day Mako wouldn't be so naive. Present-day Mako had gotten good at understanding people. He'd gotten good at reading the subtle cues they presented when something was wrong.

            "I'll get out of your hair," Mako said with a sigh, "but please, please tell me if there's anything I can do to help, okay? Don't be stubborn this time?"

            "Okay."

            Mako stood up, and though he shot another glance at Korra, he left without saying anything else.

            She never took him up on the offer, not even when Beifong approved her to go and denied him leave. She didn't talk to him when she was packing or after Su had been contacted about the overnight stay. In fact, Korra didn't speak once to Mako until the day she and Asami departed, when he met her and hugged her at the Future Industries landing pad, and even then, he'd been the one to speak. Korra couldn't bring herself to respond when he told her that his offer still stood, that he was only a radio or telephone call away, and she got onto the airship with a horrible nervous bubble inflating in her stomach.

            There was little in the way of conversation between Korra and Asami as they flew south toward Zaofu. Asami occasionally tried for it, tried talking about how nice it would be to see Opal and Suyin again, how excited she was to be away from the city and away from Future Industries for a while. Notably enough, though, Asami never once mentioned Bolin, and she never mentioned that the sole purpose of this expedition was to follow up on the lead and, if they managed to find him, bring Bolin home. It was as though Asami understood that Korra was hesitant about the whole ordeal, but Asami would never know why.

            They landed the next evening in Zaofu and were greeted on the landing pad by both Opal and Su, and though Asami had rushed off the ship into enormous, excited hugs and all manner of exuberant greetings, Korra was more reserved. She accepted hugs from Opal and Su just as Asami had, but she didn't return them. She made them as short as it was possible to make them, because Su knew too much and Opal didn't know enough, and no matter what Korra did she recognized that she was going to be uncomfortable until the moment she left.

            She was going to be uncomfortable _after_ she left, for that matter. She just wasn't sure if it would be worse.

            Through dinner and dessert, it seemed the only thing anyone could talk about was the prospect that Bolin would be coming home, and the tone and content of their discussion matched the discussion Korra and the others had had in Republic City. There was an air of excitement, certainly, particularly among the Beifong children, because Wing and Wei hadn't seen Bolin since he'd been released from the hospital and Opal had seemed to forget all the awful things he'd done to her and she'd done to him. Even Su seemed a little bit eager, though she kept herself in check fairly well. There remained a strange undertone to the whole meal, the tension of uncertainty, and it felt particularly strong when the lot of them began discussing how they thought Bolin might be, if indeed he was out there, and to what extent he'd recovered.

            After dinner, Korra and Asami retired to their rooms and Asami went to help Opal with packing and preparations. Asami had been profoundly worried about Opal because she worried Opal would get her hopes up too high. She worried that even if Bolin came back, that he wouldn't be the Bolin that Opal had idealized. And as if on schedule, as if they'd rehearsed this number before, Su arrived in Korra's room shortly after Asami left, and the conversation between them was hard.

            It went much the same as the conversation Korra had shared with Mako. It was all motherly concern for Korra's well-being, a lot of question and answer that made Korra uncomfortable in ways she'd not been uncomfortable for months. Su had a way of framing the issue that shined a bright light on the very real possibility that Korra would disintegrate in Bolin's presence, that she would be incapable of maintaining the progress that she'd achieved in his absence. Su was a stark contrast to Mako, but then, she'd always been that way. She'd always been very, very direct where Mako had developed a little softer touch. Su came right out and said that Korra should expect to feel nervous and sad and angry, and that the moment she laid eyes on Bolin it was very likely that those horrible emotions would overwhelm her. She suggested that it was likely that Korra might lash out. She told Korra to be prepared.

            Korra had considered all of that a long time ago. She'd run through her mind every iteration of Bolin's return that she could contrive, from an unexpected turn up on the doorstep to a telegraphed arrival via airship from some rich city like Ba Sing Se. Every time, she imagined that she would react the same way, with poise and dignity, with a level head and the ability to distance herself from the terrible feelings she'd associated with Bolin since he'd gone. But there existed in the back of her mind the tiniest urge to pay him back for what he'd done, to hurt him in some way, but Korra knew that no matter what she did, she'd never be able to hurt him the same way he'd hurt her. She wanted to, certainly, she had a horrible, horrible desire for it, but no matter how she racked her brain she couldn't begin to imagine what to do. What could she do to him that hadn't already been done? What could she do to him that would eclipse what he'd already done to himself?

            They stayed in Zaofu for less than twenty-four hours, and then Asami proclaimed the airship ready to depart for the Misty Palms Oasis. Within another two hours, the three girls had settled in for the journey over the mountains and into the desert. With every passing minute the nervous bubble grew in Korra's stomach, and the larger it got the more complicated it got, because on one hand she hated Bolin with all her heart and soul, but on the other very, very small hand, she'd vaguely missed him. On the one hand, she'd never wanted to see him again as long as she lived, but on the other hand, the degree to which his absence hurt Mako and Asami and everyone else meant that his absence hurt her, too.

            They spent a full day in the airship and touched down outside the Misty Palms Oasis the following morning.

            Korra wanted desperately to stay on the airship and she said as much, but this piqued Asami and Opal's curiosity and they started asking questions. Korra relented. Together, the three of them wandered about the town with their missing persons flyer, presenting it to shopkeepers and passersby and asking all of them if they'd seen Bolin anywhere.

            There was one person who said yes, a clerk at an inn in the middle of town, but she didn't know where Bolin had gone. All she could report was that he'd rented a room for two nights but hadn't actually stayed on the second, and that she was accosted by a mob of people who claimed to have seen him in a local tea shop.

            Asami and Opal seemed heartened by that, because at the very least it was some confirmation that their lead was on point. The only problem was that it didn't leave them much to go on.

            The three of them went between the few tea shops in the Oasis, questioning the owners and patrons about Bolin with no luck. As a last resort, they questioned the clerk in the last shop about the sand bending commune, and as luck would have it, she'd heard of them. In fact, she reported, the sand benders made relatively frequent trips to the couple of towns around the Si Wong Desert's outer limits on food and supply runs and to sell what items they could spare. She couldn't, however, tell them exactly where the commune was located outside of "north," but she did tell them about a town named Hongji that also did dealings with them. Beyond that, there was Chameleon City off to the east who apparently dealt with them, but none of Korra, Asami, or Opal had any desire to go that far out of the way.

            With information in hand and a fair bit more enthusiasm (at least for Asami and Opal), the girls boarded the airship and traveled northward. Korra retired to one of the rearmost benches and sat, her elbow on her knee, and watched the sand pass by. Opal and Asami must have sensed her foul mood, because neither of them bothered Korra in the slightest, instead opting to stay toward the control panel happily discussing things that Korra couldn't hear and about which Korra didn't care.

            All Korra cared about was figuring out how she was going to avoid Bolin, if indeed they found him.

            Opal spotted the town of Hongji, a place larger than the Misty Palms but without its refinement. Clearly it wasn't a tourist attraction.

            Korra wasn't sure how she managed to convince them to allow her to stay behind, but eventually Opal and Asami disembarked into the town to seek more information and she was left alone to her thoughts.

            In reality, Korra didn't think much. There wasn't much room left in her head for thinking. Mostly she sat and watched out the window the same as she'd done before, and she marked the people who walked by and the strange animals they led, the weird clothes they wore, and she tried to discern whether any of them might've been a sand bender. But she realized fairly quickly that there was no telling someone belonged to a group by looks alone, particularly not here, because everyone seemed to be walking around in the same brown clothes with the same loose-fitting cloaks and hoods to keep them out of the sun.

            Asami and Opal returned quicker than Korra thought they would. They returned so quickly that it startled her when they boarded the airship and Asami gave an unusually excited whoop and set to the controls immediately.

            They set down again a little after dusk and Asami proclaimed them to have arrived. Korra's heart sank.

            It took Korra a while to muster the nerve to disembark the airship beside Opal and Asami because she had no idea what to expect from this place. Outside of the obvious _Bolin issue_ , she'd never had experience with sand benders, particularly those in a commune, and she worried that their society might be too different from her own to make a good connection.

            Korra wasn't sure how worried she was about that. On one hand, she needed to make the connection because Asami and Opal expected her to, and if she didn't put forth her full effort, they would certainly notice. But putting forth her full effort and striking up a positive relationship with these people would put them one step closer to finding Bolin.

            She hated the whole situation.

            The first thing that struck Korra about the place was the oppressive heat. It wasn't that she hadn't expected it. She'd been in the desert before, but it was hotter than she remembered it being. It was hotter than the Misty Palms had been. It could've been her nerves, but it could also have been the lack of any real structure or shade.

            The second thing Korra noticed was the commune itself, a collection of tiny hut-like structures splayed out among the dunes with seemingly little rhyme or reason with nothing connecting them together but sand. There were no roads or paths. There was no infrastructure. This was as primitive a place as Korra had ever seen, and that served only to make her more nervous.

            They were greeted by a small group of people who must have been tribal representatives, and Korra made no move to introduce herself while Asami and Opal stepped forward and shook hands. But then Asami did it for her, and Korra had no choice but to play along. The moment it was revealed that she was the Avatar, the greeting party's whole mood changed, and within only a few moments Asami had mentioned that they were there to speak to whomever was in charge, and the three girls were being led across the sand to the largest of the sandstone structures.

            It was a sizeable domed building with an entrance marked by bright, thin cloths draped all around, and had Korra not been so consumed by worry she might've been impressed upon stepping inside. The place seemed to be one room, though a small door led out of the wall opposite the entrance, and it seemed much larger on the inside than it had seemed outside. It was a gathering place, Korra understood, because there were dozens of pretty square mats--they looked like rugs of some kind--arranged around a single raised platform upon which rested a significantly larger mat. Beyond that, though, there were tables with raised sandstone benches lining the walls, upon which rested knives and blades of different shapes and styles, and along the wall hung what looked to her like sand shark skins in a fashion similar to the water tribes' animal hide hangings. Up high, the jaws of what must have been a gargantuan sand shark hung from the ceiling, wide open and a little bit scary.

            Korra, Opal, and Asami were invited to sit on three of the mats directly before the larger, and while one of their escorts made his way toward the opening in the back of the room, another headed back out. The rest stayed there and seated themselves on mats farther behind.

            They didn't have to wait long. A woman emerged from the door across the way, led by their escort and hustling with some purpose. She was older, it was true, but some combination of the clothes she wore and the way she carried herself made her seem very, very young. There was little about her left to the imagination, because even though the majority of her body was covered, her leggings and cuirass hugged her everywhere. It wasn't what Korra had expected.

            The woman sat cross-legged on the long ornamented mat, and she rested her hands on her knees comfortably before pausing to watch the three of them a little too closely. She at last leveled a recognizing eye on Korra and she smiled and clasped her hands together, then she bowed even while sitting.

            "Avatar Korra, it's a pleasure to host you and your companions in our colony," she said brightly. "My name is Yan. I'm the Chief of this commune."

            "It's nice to meet you," Korra said. She hoped she hadn't come across as fake.

            When Yan sat back straight, she wore a welcoming smile, and for some reason Korra felt on edge. This was going too well, she thought. These people were supposed to be uncivilized. These people were supposed to be impolite barbarians, if the rumors were to be believed, but everything Korra had seen so far suggested a refinement that may even have gone beyond the water tribes, at least in the south. The place was rustic, for certain, but their behavior was not.

            "We've never entertained someone of your status before," Yan continued, unfazed and unapologetically, "so you'll have to forgive us for being unprepared."

            "No," Korra insisted with a slight stammer, "it's okay. You don't need to go through any trouble. See, we just came here to ask you some questions, if that's okay."

            Yan looked puzzled, but she nodded all the same. Then Asami produced from her bag a copy of the missing persons flyer that she, Jinora, and the others had been circulating for so long, and Asami presented it openly.

            "We're looking for our friend," Asami explained. She sounded just as pleasant as Yan did. "We received a letter a couple weeks ago that suggested he might have come through here, and we're trying to follow up on the lead. Have you seen him?"

            The moment Yan accepted the flyer, her expression changed. She examined it, her eyebrows creased with concentration, and it seemed to Korra as though it was taking her a very long time to read it. She was considering saying something, trying to excuse herself under the assumption that Bolin wasn't there, when Yan looked up once more.

            "Yes," she said plainly, "he's here."

            At the same time Opal and Asami exchanged looks of utter elation, Korra felt suddenly like her stomach would explode. She wanted to throw up. In three words, this woman had shattered every last hope that Korra had about things being easy, because it would have been so much easier to go back to Republic City defeated and tell Mako and Tenzin and Lin and everyone else that it had been a false lead and that Bolin was still missing in action. But that was gone now. It was gone completely, and the weight of reality came crashing down so forcefully that Korra scarcely heard the rest of the conversation. She barely registered the slightly somber shift in Yan's tone.

            "But he's not here right now, and he may not be back for a few days." Yan returned the flyer.

            "Where is he?" Opal asked. It seemed the news of Bolin's absence hadn't dampened her excitement.

            "He's out," Yan explained vaguely, her voice more subdued still. "A couple months ago we found a fertile hunting ground and since then the party he runs with has been gone more than they've been home. It's been an incredible haul this season."

            Korra looked to Asami and Opal, and the two of them looked to Korra and between each other. All of them were plainly confused. But Asami was the one who eventually said, "What do you mean?"

            "Oh, I'm sorry," Yan said with a gentle wave of her hand. She still didn't perk up. Her energy didn't match what it had been when the three of them first walked in. "Bolin is out with his hunting party."

            "Hunting...Party?" Opal stammered.

            "Yes," Yan replied, a little deadpan. It was like she met Opal's disbelief with disbelief of her own. "He's been with them for about five months now. They've been very successful."

            "What are they hunting?" Asami asked. She sounded just as dumbfounded as Opal had sounded.

            "Sand sharks."

            Again came the exchange of looks, except this time it seemed that nobody could bring themselves to say anything. Opal and Asami both seemed some combination of impressed and stupefied, but Korra wasn't sure what to feel. If it was true, that news in itself was a fairly good indicator of Bolin's status. If he was healthy enough to be out hunting something as dangerous as a _sand shark_ , he must have made some progress physically. He must have built some strength. And if he was out hunting sand sharks with a _party_ of people, he must have made some significant social strides, as well.

            It didn't matter, though. Korra still didn't want to see him.

            "May I ask what business you have with him?" Yan asked after a while, after the silence had settled and it seemed the topic of sand shark hunting had died. "Why are you here to see him?"

            "He left us a while ago," Opal said. "He..." She paused, and then glanced at Korra. Korra didn't respond. Opal stammered a little bit as though she was uncertain what to say, but then she looked at her fidgeting fingers and seemed to settle. "He ran away a little more than ten months ago. He didn't say goodbye to any of us. He just left."

            "I see," Yan said. Her tone gave nothing away, and the longer Korra listened to her speak the more ill at ease she felt. Korra began to realize just how calculated this woman must be, how shrewd she must be. "He's been with us for around six months. He arrived at the start of winter when the first cold snap hit."

            "And he's been with you this whole time?" Asami asked, a bit of disbelief in her voice.

            "Yes."

            "Would..." Opal started to speak but she cut herself off. Then she looked back at her hands, her face gone all pink. "If it's not too much to ask, would you mind if we stayed here until he comes back?"

            At this, Yan's eyebrow raised, but that was the only reaction she had. It went away just as quickly, though, so that in the end there was no trace of skepticism about her at all. Then she said in her calculated way, "It would be our pleasure to host the Avatar and her companions for as long as you would like to stay, and it's getting late besides. We can arrange for some temporary housing for you for this evening and as long as you'd like to remain here."

            "I don't think we'll need that," Asami said. "If you don't mind it staying anchored here, we've got my airship outside. We can sleep there."

            "I see no problem with that arrangement."

            The girls exchanged another look. This time Asami and Opal had seemed to take on some of Korra's doubt. But when Korra looked back up, Yan had stood and had dropped into another bow.

            "Please, allow us to host a dinner in your honor. Take tonight to settle in, and we'll have all the preparations made for a feast tomorrow night."

            "You don't need to go through the trouble," Korra stammered. "It's really okay, we have--"

            "I insist," said Yan. "I won't take no for an answer. Consider it an extension of good will from our commune to you and yours. It wouldn't do to have it any other way." Yan bowed once more, a shallow bow this time. "Please make yourselves comfortable. If you have any needs or wants please don't hesitate to ask. My yurt is open to any who need at any time of day without question."

            Before any of them could say anything, Yan excused herself.

            Korra had never seen anyone as animated as Opal was upon returning to the airship. Immediately upon crossing the threshold she threw herself at Asami with a whoop of girlish glee and wrapped her in a hug so tight that it looked like Asami was in pain. But Opal broke away just as fast and clung tight to Asami's shoulders while she jumped like a child and shouted, "He's here! He's here! He's _actually_ here!"

            Korra felt guilty that she didn't share in Opal's excitement. Even Asami looked happy. It was like the two of them had forgotten the awful things Bolin had done before he'd gone, the way he'd abandoned all of them and left them to worry about whether he was alive or dead. It was like they'd forgotten how he'd turned Korra into an object and dropped her like a ton of hot lead at the exact moment that her feelings betrayed her.

            But they hadn't known about that. No one knew.

            "But what did she mean?" Opal asked, her voice quieter now that she'd stopped bouncing but no less excited. She still clung to Asami's shoulders. "What did she mean _sand shark hunting?_ "

            Asami threw her hands up, apparently at a loss. "I'd guess it means that he's out hunting sand sharks."

            "But aren't they dangerous?"

            Asami nodded. There was no way that nod could ever have conveyed just how dangerous the animals actually were. And they were ugly, too, and horrifying. Korra had no doubts that if a person was caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, they'd be swallowed whole.

            "But that must mean he's better," Opal said, some of the excitement coming back. Korra noticed another little bounce. "That must mean he's healthy, doesn't it?"

            "I'd think so," Asami replied.

            Opal's face broke into an ear-to-ear smile that could've shined so bright as to be blinding. Then without another word, she threw her arms around Asami again, and Asami accepted it, seemingly a little excited herself but with enough strength of mind to temper it.

            Korra couldn't share in their enthusiasm. She hadn't felt a shred of relief or happiness since Chief Yan had informed them that Bolin was actually there and actually alive. Her sense of dread had deepened, in fact, and had deepened even more the longer they spoke with the Chief. There was something about the woman that Korra didn't like yet couldn't identify, something that left Korra feeling distinctly uneasy and a little on her guard. And though she would never say it out loud, Korra came to a very firm conclusion: Nothing good could come from any of this.

 


	53. Reunion

            Bolin was happy. For the first time in months, he was happy, and he'd _been_ happy and he'd been healthy and life had been good. For the first time in a long time, Bolin could say that he was content, and that wasn't a descriptor he thought would ever apply to him again.

            He'd come far, and he knew it. Where before there had been some doubt in his mind as to the extent of his progress, there was none of that left because he spent far more days feeling healthy than he spent feeling rotten and sick. He spent more time outside with Toma and the hunting party who had adopted him, and after a few weeks of hard daily work, he found that he could keep pace with them relatively well and didn't have to worry so much about heat stroke and sunburn. And with all that success came a confidence so strong that it pushed the self-loathing out of his mind so that he could mostly ignore it, so that the panic only hit him in times of particular duress, like when he and Shibu had nearly been taken out by a sand shark on their first proper hunt.

            There were still bad days, though, and there were plenty of them. There were days when the tiny scraps of self-doubt left over in his mind reared up and threatened to take control. There were days when he pushed himself too hard or too far and had to sit while the others kept going. There were days when he caught glimpses of himself and didn't believe that the person he was looking at was really him, that the Bolin who'd waked from collapse would never be able to get back into such good shape, because ten months ago when he'd wound up on Hokki's doorstep a sloppy, weak mess he'd barely been able to drag a wagon up a hill. Now he felt like he could drag ten wagons up a hill, and sometimes, when he was feeling particularly good and particularly cocky, he admitted to himself that he _looked_ like he could drag ten wagons up a hill, too.

            The nights were the worst because they were the only times when his mind had time to wander, and in the dark, it didn't seem to matter how good he felt or how good he looked. In the dark, none of that mattered at all. There was no one to see him or to compliment him, and most of the time he wasn't actually confident enough to compliment himself. The nights were the times when the self-doubt crept back in, when Bolin thought of home and of the people he'd left behind, when he thought about the places he'd been and the things he'd seen along the way. When sleep finally overcame him, sometimes he would dream of Mako or Opal and wake up feeling at once warm with nostalgia and cold with sadness that he'd never see them again. Sometimes he would dream of Korra, and he counted those dreams nearly equal to the nightmares of the collapse and Baihe Island, because no matter how much time or distance he put between himself and those things, it seemed they would never stop haunting him.

            But not right now. There was none of that now and there hadn't been for the last week because there wasn't enough time to entertain self-doubt or loathing while on the hunt. There was just enough time to make camp and sleep in a safe spot aboard one of the half dozen sand-sailers, just enough time to wake up and make sure that both he and Shibu had eaten breakfast before the party set off again toward the hunting grounds that would feed the commune and provide enough in the way of exports to carry them through the year. And now they'd gotten their kill--a double--there would be no rest at all until they returned home. The carcasses wouldn't last that long.

            Bolin inflated a little when he thought about the kill. It had been entirely accidental, he supposed, or at least it was unplanned. They'd been following a juvenile over the dunes toward a rocky segment of desert where it couldn't burrow when a fully-grown sand shark caught them off guard. It all had happened so suddenly: Toma and the left flank had been gunning for the juvenile when the adult breached the sand to the right, on a path perpendicular to their own. It came straight at them with hungry eyes, mouth agape, and all of the points had been too caught up with the juvenile to change course. So, when it opened its enormous mouth and the terrifying, wide-flapped jaws seemed poised to close over the lot of them, Bolin drew Shibu up short and yanked the biggest tendril of sand he could from the earth. He liquefied it as it came forth and heaved it with all his might toward the enormous beast, and the shards of obsidian that connected with the inside of its mouth and throat stopped its advance and sent it burrowing back into the dunes. Within ten minutes, the party regrouped and struck out, and then the wounded adult and the juvenile both lay unmoving atop the sand.

            Per the usual, Toma was credited with one kill, with the juvenile they'd been pursuing, but Bolin was credited with the other. Without his quick action the whole right flank would've been shark food, and the swell of pride that rose in him more than made up for his initial terror. He would be marked for the fourth time, but rather than another thumbprint dot on his ribs he'd be granted a line above them, his first line, and then he'd be celebrated.

            Sun would never believe it.

            The prideful feeling stayed in Bolin's chest and in his stomach the whole way back to the commune, even while they lashed the sharks by their caudal fins to the sailers and the overwhelming stench of dead fish and ammonia fell over them like a fog. The prideful feeling stayed there even when he realized that Shibu had suffered a jagged cut to her hind quarter that would definitely put Sun in a horrible mood. It stayed there even when Toma reminded him of how much it was going to hurt when Yan and the elders carved the long thin line into his skin that symbolized his kill, because no matter how many times a person was marked, it never stopped hurting.

            The prideful feeling stayed in Bolin's chest until they crested the hill overlooking their communal home and he saw the Future Industries airship grounded just beyond its borders. When he saw the airship, his heart fell, his stomach fell, and all the pride inside him rotted away and weighed his body down with an overwhelming sense of despair that he couldn't cover up if he tried.

            There was only one reason that an airship would show up out of the blue.

            Everything went as it always did. The hunters dragged the sharks up to the very borders of the commune and everyone from children to elders poured out into the dusk to meet them. Everything went as usual when the people dug twin trenches into the sand and when the hunters untied the sharks and dragged them over, when Sun came out and wrapped Bolin in an enormous hug before leading Shibu back home to be washed and fed. Worse was that Sun didn't mention anything about the cut on Shibu's flank or the strange airship or the visitors that Bolin knew it carried. She didn't say anything at all. She just hugged him, grabbed Shibu around the horns, and led her off.

            Bolin kept his eyes peeled the whole time and hoped beyond hope that he wouldn't see anyone he recognized, and the strangest feeling of self-consciousness came over him. All of a sudden, he felt aware of how weird he must look with his sand bender clothes and the marks on his ribs, with the brown sand shark-leather shoulder brace that Yan had made for him and the awkward, kind-of farmer's tan from the long sleeve he wore beneath it. Then there was his hair that had gone a little bit shaggy because there weren't any barber shops in the middle of the desert and he hadn't had an occasion to go into town since he’d arrived. To any sandbender in the commune he looked completely normal, but to someone from Republic City he'd look completely ridiculous.

            But maybe he'd blend in.

            The pall followed Bolin for the rest of the very busy evening until well after he retired home to the tiny sandstone yurt he'd built with Sun and Yan at the end of his second month, until he'd changed into modest clothes more fit for days of sandstorms than clear evenings, climbed the ladder to his loft, and dropped like a stone onto his cot to begin his nighttime routine of staring out through the open dome at the stars. It should've been relaxing. He should've been reveling in his accomplishment.

            He wasn't.

            Instead of feeling good about himself and allowing that positivity to fill him up, Bolin worried. He found his eyes darting to the opening to his yurt, found himself regretting he'd never installed a door. But then, none of the houses had a door, not a proper one, anyway. Most of them had only cloths over their entrances, and he'd never bothered with it because he spent so little time inside and anyone who might visit him was more than welcome to walk in any time. Now he worried that someone _would_ walk through that open entrance. He worried that they'd come in, look up at him, and say, "Bolin, it's time to go home," and then they would drag him back to the airship and drag him back to Zaofu or Republic City so that he could be punished for all the stupid things he'd done in the name of coping.

            He worried so much that he felt the panic coming up in him, and in that moment, he knew he had two choices: Lie there and panic or get up and work his way through it.

            He got up.

            It had taken a long time to learn how to deal with the panic. It had taken a great many failures and anxiety attacks and sleepless nights spent in a shivering, thoughtless ball on his cot for Bolin to know that the first step in overcoming the panic was to get up and move, to get away from the place where the panic set in so that he could begin the hard work of forcing the offending thoughts out of his mind. As he had on so many other nights, Bolin climbed down from his loft and began pacing the perimeter of his yurt, stepping purposefully over sitting pillows that he'd stepped over a hundred times now, making sure he didn't stub his toe on the cookpot opposite the door or the wicker chest that held the belongings from his past life. He paced and he spoke to himself the same way he spoke to himself every other night that he engaged in this annoying but entirely necessary ritual.

            "Stop. You're not in danger. You're not in trouble. You're safe at home. There's no reason to panic. You are in control. Stop. You're not in danger. You're not in trouble. You're safe at home. There's no reason to panic. You are in control."

            He repeated it once for every lap he made around the yurt, but no matter how many laps he made or how many times he told himself that there was nothing to panic about, the airship was still grounded outside. This panic was justified because there _was_ a threat and the threat was very real, and there was no way that anyone who'd come for Bolin would leave without first making contact. He was genuinely surprised that they hadn't made contact already.

            Bolin left his yurt to pursue step two in the panic avoidance process: seeking help. It didn't matter that the night had gone dark in the way that only a desert could go dark, because Bolin had walked this very path so many times that he could have done it blind. It was a relatively long trek to Sun's yurt, as she lived clear on the other side of the commune, but most times Bolin had needed to resort to asking her for help he'd calmed by the time he reached her doorstep. This wasn't one of those nights, and he walked straight inside without knocking or announcing he was there at all, and if Sun cared, she didn't show it. She just watched him from her place on the floor, where she sat coolly embroidering something or other that Bolin didn't care about.

            "Rough night?"

            Bolin sat down on the rug across from her and dropped his face into his hands. She knew perfectly well why he'd shown up. She knew that his being there at such a ridiculous hour meant that he needed help. He'd done his part by recognizing that he couldn't fix himself and finding her, and now the proverbial panic ball was in her court.

            "How strong? Sixty?"

            "Seventy."

            "Oh. So, it's a _really_ bad night."

            That was all Sun said before she stood and made her way across the single room structure to her own cookpot and countertop. Bolin felt her walk away apparently without a care in the world, apparently completely unperturbed by his distress. And the same as she always did when he sought her help, she mixed his water on the very strong side, presented it to him, and sat in silence while he drank it as fast as he could.

            It didn't even faze him anymore, the taste of the bitter juice in his water, not even at such a high concentration. All it did was make him tired. That was the point, though. If he couldn't calm down on his own...

            "Let's walk," Sun said after Bolin had drained his cup, set it back on the floor, and resumed his head-in-hands posture. "Come on. Let's get you outside for some air."

            She stood again, and before Bolin could protest she'd hooked him by the elbow, dragged him to his feet, and led him out into the night.

            They walked for a long time in utter silence such that the only noise they could hear was the wind through the dunes and the constant chips and splats and squishes of people working overnight to dismantle the sand sharks. A double kill required that kind of dedication. But that noise was far away, and as she always did, Sun led him straight out of the borders of the commune and into the desert proper, and they walked in what might have been a straight line or what might have been a circle. It made no difference. Bolin wasn't paying attention to where they were going anyway.

            "Well, what's got our tender little desert flower all up in a tizzy this time?" Sun asked dryly.

            "Shut up."

            "Okay," Sun sighed, "a really, really bad night."

            The silence fell again and lasted until the cactus juice had begun spreading its comfortably heavy warmth through Bolin's middle and into his limbs. This was the whole point: If he could slow his thoughts down, slow his body down, he could control it more easily. If he could just get ahold of himself, he'd be okay.

            "I hear you got the kill," Sun started again, more tentatively this time, "on the juvenile?"

            "The adult."

            "I guess Toma took it well, then? That you got the bigger one?"

            "He didn't have much choice," Bolin said, a deliberateness to his speaking. "If I hadn't killed it, half the right flank would be shark food right now."

            "Then it was an accident?"

            "No, but it could've been bad."

            Silence again. Comfortable silence. Sun had always been good at getting Bolin's mind off of whatever was troubling him, off of whatever was causing the panic. Bolin knew that, but the thought still nagged at him that there was an airship anchored outside the commune. There was a Future Industries airship on the ground. At that thought, another jolt of panic tore through the haze and Bolin caught his breath, but if Sun noticed, she didn't say anything.

            "You'll get your first kill line. Do you want me to do it?"

            Bolin didn't honestly know. He'd never seen her etch a line before. As far as he knew, Sun had only learned the delicate process of inking the thumbprint dots.

            "Mom says it's time I did one. If you want, I can do yours. We can have our first time together."

            "If you want."

            "Are you excited about it?"

            "I _was_ excited about it."

            Sun slowed her pace then, and Bolin slowed to match. Then she stopped. Then Bolin stopped. He was confused. She'd never stopped like this before. Usually their late-night chats turned into cynical commentary and lighthearted jabs before Sun dropped Bolin off at his yurt and went on her way. This didn't seem to be going the right direction.

            "Look, I know why you're upset tonight," Sun said. Even without watching her fidget, Bolin could feel her nerves springing up. It wasn’t a feeling he got from her often. "It's because of the airship. It's because they came--"

            "Who's here?"

            Bolin hadn't meant the question to come out so forcefully, but he supposed there was little helping it. He'd not taken such an aggressive tone in a long, long time, but now seemed as good an excuse as any to let a little anger go and Yan always told him not to hold it in.

            "The Avatar..."

            They were the only two words Bolin heard Sun say, though he knew that she spoke beyond that. At the very mention of Korra's title, Bolin felt the blood drain from his face so quickly that the world began to spin, felt his feet and hands go numb with an explosion of terror that completely overshadowed the calming effects of the drink. For a second, he reeled. For a second, he felt like he would faint. But then he felt Sun's hands on his arms and he shook his head as though trying to drive the terror away, and when he opened his eyes again, she looked concerned.

            "Are you okay? Do you need to sit down?"

            "No."

            "You looked like you were going to--"

            "I'm not."

            "Did you hear what I said, then?"

            "No."

            Sun grumbled something that Bolin didn't hear, but she drew an enormous breath and dropped her hands down, then folded her arms across her chest a bit defensively. "I remember a long time ago you told me about how you left home without telling anyone where you were going, or that you were going at all. And you told me that someday your friends would probably find you and try to drag you back home. Now, I haven't talked to any of them very much and I tried to keep my cool, but it's not a long shot to guess that they want to take you home with them. It's Avatar Korra and two of her friends. Two other girls."

            Bolin shook his head, at a loss for what to say. He remembered that conversation very clearly. It had been on a colder evening just after the turn of the season and Bolin had dreamt of Korra so vividly that he woke in a blind panic, all drenched with sweat and initially incapable of dragging himself off his loft to seek Yan or Sun for help. Somehow, he managed to stumble his way down and stagger to Sun's yurt, but he hadn't been able to speak for a long time. He hadn't been able to answer her questions until he'd downed a tall glass of eighty percent, and though the drink numbed the panic, it also took away the inhibition that had always kept his personal life personal.

            He dumped every secret he’d ever kept out that night, and consequently, that night marked the end of Sun's mistreating him.

            "Mom has been entertaining them for the last couple days, giving them tours of the commune and things like that."

            "Why didn't they come to the sand shark docking today?"

            "Mom doesn't want you all to meet up until someone talked to you about it. She didn't want to cause you to panic, but I guess that didn't matter in the end. And she wants to talk to the girls, too, about you. She wants to prepare them as much as she wants me to prepare you."

            "What do you mean, she wants to prepare them?"

            "I don't really know. I'd imagine that she's going to talk to them about you, if she hasn't already. My mom isn't a person to jump into things without a lot of discussion and thinking first. She did tell me that she's not going to let them see you until the feast, and you're going to be so busy between the marking and all the honors that you probably won't have to talk to them at all if you don’t want to."

            Bolin contemplated, his arms crossed self-consciously. He'd taken part in the sand shark celebrations before. He'd been at the center of those celebrations three times now, the nights when he'd been marked for successful hunts and had shared the choice cuts of meat from the sharks at the feasts. They were the best nights, because people treated him as one of their own and they didn't dwell on the mistakes of his past but instead focused on his current success, and Bolin didn't want to miss out on that. He deserved to be there.

            Still, the idea of anyone from Republic City seeing him in his hunting garb made Bolin nervous because the only people who'd seen him without a shirt were Opal and Korra, and even then, it had been dark or there had been sheets. _Something_ had obscured him. And the last time anyone had seen him he'd been scrawny and sick and there'd been an enormous bruise all up and down his side. All that was gone now, replaced by muscle and bone and three ovals on his ribs, and in a couple of days there'd be a line over them, too. In short, there was no real reason for him to be ashamed, but he was anyway. If Sun had been right in calling them, "the girls," it certainly meant Korra, Opal, and Asami.

            "How are you going to handle it?"

            Bolin looked up to find Sun eyeing him carefully. "What?"

            "Well, what are you going to do? What's your plan?"

            He didn't know what to say, so he looked down at his feet and kicked nervously at the sand. "I don't really know," he said honestly. "I wonder how bad it would be if I just sat out."

            "You're _not_ sitting out."

            "Can you mark me in private?"

            "No. That would be disrespectful. And don't even think of asking the elders to do it in private because you'll get an earful about it."

            Bolin threw up his hands, defeated. "Then I really don't know. I don't want to be a spectacle for them. I don't want to be some kind of sideshow freak but I feel like a freak and I kind of _look_ like a freak, at least compared to how I looked when I got here."

            "You were a pale, scrawny little boy when you got here. Well, a pale, scrawny, sometimes scary little boy. I'd argue that you look better now than you did when you showed up."

            "Yeah," Bolin sighed, downcast, "sure I do."

            "Here's what you're going to do," Sun said, her voice very bright now. "You're going to show up to the feast exactly the way you normally would. You're going to show up in your gear, you're going to be honored, and you're going to eat. Then you'll go to the marking ceremony and pretend like the Avatar doesn't even exist. You're going to go enjoy yourself because you deserve to go enjoy yourself. Don't let them being here ruin your night."

            On the one hand, Sun was most certainly right. On the other, ignoring that he'd be in the same room with Korra, Opal, and Asami was much easier said than done. All the same, Bolin didn't know what other choice he had. Thus, he followed Sun in their walk and he made his decision: He'd play the delicate desert flower for Sun's sake, because this was her time to shine just as much as it was his, and there was nothing from his past that should stand in the way of that.

*****

            Korra wasn't sure who Yan was talking to anymore. She'd been sitting there for what felt like forever, staring at her knees and fidgeting in her lap. It seemed as though Asami was the one doing most of the talking now, that she was the one who was really interacting with Yan because Opal had gone quiet out of what must have been nervousness and Korra had gone quiet out of fear and anger. Yan had verified that Bolin was in the village, that he'd returned with the hunting party and that he'd retired back to his yurt to rest before the feast. There was something about being so near to him that made Korra desperately uncomfortable even if she hadn't seen him.

            Yan sat them down that night to talk, and while she hadn't been angry, she'd definitely been stern. She explained very clearly that the decision to stay or go was Bolin's to make, and that she wasn't going to force him one way or another. She said, in fact, that she was going to try to avoid influencing his opinion at all and that she wanted him to have plenty of time to think. She said that Sun was going to speak with him about the whole thing and that until the night of the feast, Yan didn't want any of them to try to talk to him. And if it seemed like he didn't want to talk at the feast or subsequent celebration, they shouldn't force him into it. Doing so could only end badly.

            But then Yan lightened up and began entertaining the idea that he might go home with them, and the conversation that followed between her and Asami was fruitful and informative. Yan talked through a great deal of information that detailed how Bolin had changed since he'd arrived, and with Asami's help they painted a fairly robust picture of his progress in certain areas and his stagnation in others. They determined that on the whole, Bolin was healthier than he'd been before he left, at least physically, but Yan conceded that he still had issues with anxiety and sleeplessness and that he was prone to bouts of low self-esteem and periods of depression that she assumed stemmed from his lingering lack of confidence. She explained that he still had nightmares, and that there had been several times that he'd come out of his yurt in the morning looking like he'd not slept in months.

            "If he decides to come home with you, he'll need support," Yan concluded. "He'll need someone that he can go to at any time of the day or night if he's panicking and can't stop it on his own. Right now, he knows to come to either me or to Sun, depending on who's closer, and it's been working well to keep things under control. He'll need somewhere that he can go to be alone, too, and he'll need to be able to go there without any interference. Bolin has learned to cope, I'll give him that, but he relies heavily on very specific routines and he's the only one who knows what he needs to do and when he needs to do it. I'd argue that most everything he's done for the last several months has been on a strict routine, and without that in place, it's very likely that he'll become more prone to panic and rage."

            Korra glanced up to see Asami nodding, her eyes locked on Yan in rapt attention. There was something about the look on Asami's face that calmed Korra's nerves somehow. She looked so concerned and so parental, and Korra understood then that if Bolin was to come home with them, it would be Asami who looked after him. It would be Asami who served as his safety net because who else would accept that responsibility? Mako was too caught up with working, and Opal would likely go straight back to Zaofu.

            It was all a mess, Korra thought. It was all a horrible, horrible mess. What the heck would they do with Bolin if he came home with them? Would he go live with Mako again? Would Mako be able to deal with Bolin at the same time he dealt with his incredibly heavy work load? And what if he stayed on Air Temple Island? That would be catastrophic because no matter where she went or what she did, Korra would know that Bolin was always five minutes away. She couldn't handle him being so close. She couldn't even handle the thought of him being so close.

            And what of the Society? All the battle plans were drawn, all of the gears had begun turning which would ultimately lead to the Society's downfall. The United Forces had started planning raids on suspected Earth Nation hideaways, and Korra, Mako, and Asami had agreed to take on covert missions in Fire Nation territory because they were more mobile and could move about in secret. They'd only stopped their planning to follow up on this out-of-the-blue lead, and no one had actually expected it to pan out. Was Bolin just supposed to come with them?

            She didn't know. She didn't know anything, and she wasn't sure that she'd ever be able to figure it out.

            Most of the next two days Korra spent hiding away in the airship, deflecting Asami's concerned questions and working hard to avoid Opal's nervous anticipation. Asami troubled herself with the radio, trying to amplify the signal so that she could reach Republic City or Zaofu at the very least, but nothing seemed to pan out. Opal did a lot of pacing, a lot of looking out the windows. She was restless like a child.

            Korra hid in her bunk.

            Inevitably, the day arrived for the promised celebration, for the feast surrounding the successful sand shark hunt, and all day Korra spent battling the feeling that buzzard wasps were nesting in her stomach. By the time evening fell and Yan arrived at the airship to escort the girls away, Korra felt utterly sick, and she kept her eyes on the ground from the moment they stepped out of the airship. There was no formal gathering when they arrived, but whenever Korra glanced about she saw the makings of an enormous event.

            All over the place were pedestals and tables raised and bent into place. There were pitchers and platters and place settings all made of the same light sandstone as everything else. And there were people. There were dozens and dozens of people just milling about, tending to this and that in preparation, and again Korra was struck by the weirdness of this whole situation. It was like culture shock. Everyone had dressed not in the bland browns of Hongji, but in bright, bold blues and reds that stood out starkly against the sand. The women wore ribbons and light-looking dresses that flowed even without wind. Many of the men went shirtless, but what clothes they wore sported beautiful embroidery all up and down in a million shapes that could have been abstract or concrete, but Korra couldn't tell from far away exactly what they were meant to represent.

            The three girls sat at a place of honor at a long table outside the Chieftain's yurt on bright and lavishly decorated pads that Korra hadn't yet seen. After they were seated and settled, it wasn't long before more people followed and the whole place began to resonate with the sounds of celebration. Korra, Opal, and Asami watched the crowds gather from their seats, and while Opal and Asami looked as though they might be enjoying themselves--certainly they were at attention in case Bolin walked by--Korra kept her head low.

            By the time things settled and more people had taken seats at the remaining tables, there were too many bodies for Korra to bother searching, and when she glanced at Opal and Asami they'd struck up a conversation between the two of them that had them both grinning like fools. Korra wished she could be so carefree.

            It wasn't until after the dinner was served that anything of interest happened. In fact, outside of the dinner service itself, things seemed benign. Plates heaped with fish were passed down the tables, and each person took a portion of whatever size they wanted, and after the fish came grains and vegetables and breads. Fifteen minutes  passed between the first plate and when Korra finally got to try eating, but by that time her stomach had tightened up so much that she wasn't sure she could.

            Through the meal Korra listened to Asami, Opal, and Yan's conversations about everything from what kind of food they were eating to the layout of the feast, how this setup was different than their usual gatherings because it needed to be more formal on account of Avatar Korra's being there. When a younger girl came around filling their cups and Yan pointedly covered Asami's with her hand, they discussed what exactly Yan meant when she requested _pure water,_ and after some convincing, Asami managed to get her hands on a small cup made of fifteen percent cactus juice, the highest Yan would permit. Asami took a tentative sip, curled her face in disgust, then passed the cup to Opal who did much the same, except that her nose curled when she sniffed at it. Then the cup came to Korra and as a matter of course she took the tiniest sip, and immediately she knew that she wasn't going to be eating. If her appetite hadn't been ruined before, it certainly was now.

            In the middle of their dinners it finally happened, and it happened in no way that Korra expected. Opal gasped very suddenly and very tremulously, a sound so obvious that Korra couldn't ignore it, and when she looked over to see Opal's expression, she knew.

            For a few seconds, Korra watched Opal and considered how in a different situation the look on her face might have been comical. Her eyes had gone so wide they might've fallen straight out of her skull, and the rest of her face had turned utterly pink. It was an expression of complete surprise, of slack-jawed stupor that left Opal incapable of doing anything but pawing insistently at Asami's sleeve until Asami looked over, saw Opal's expression the same way that Korra had, and looked out toward the people. Then, after a few moments, Asami's eyes went wide, too, and it was then that Korra knew she had to look.

            It was difficult to follow the line of Asami and Opal's cartoonish gawking through the thick crowd, but Korra tried. She paused looking at every table in that general direction, but she couldn't pick him out. Against her better judgment she whispered, "Where?" and Opal pointed none too subtly outward.

            "There," Opal whispered, "at the table with all the boys." Then Opal paused and she seemed to be counting. "Fourth? Fifth from the end?"

            Korra felt at once very stupid and very scared because she'd looked over that very table three times without seeing him, but when Opal pointed Bolin out so obviously there was no missing him, and there was no question about Opal and Asami's ridiculous reactions. He was there, and he was undoubtedly healthy.

            Amongst a table of men mostly of an age with himself, Bolin was presently leaning forward to carry on a very animated conversation with someone two people down the bench. He wore an enormous and slightly sly smile, a smile that seemed reminiscent of the time before the collapse, and when one of the other men roared something about "the spine of a cactus," which Korra could hear only partially above the other noise, the whole table erupted in raucous laughter. Korra hadn't seen Bolin laugh so hard in ages, so hard that he leaned back and covered his face as though he was embarrassed, and he only sat upright again when a couple of his tablemates him slapped him about the shoulders and back and made gestures at him that Korra didn't understand. Then the lot of them went back to their food and drink, though there was certainly still more talking and laughing being done than there was eating. The whole while, it seemed that Bolin and one other, perhaps the slightly older man sitting beside him, were the center of attention.

            She watched for a long time, until she realized that she wasn't merely _watching_. She was staring at him, gaping at him, gawking the same way that Opal had seemed to have been doing, fixated on how the person at the table looked like Bolin at the same time he didn't look like Bolin, because there was something very Bolin-ish about him at the same time there was something very _not_ Bolin-ish about him. The only real indication that she was indeed staring at the correct person was the very recognizable, very unique metal vambrace on his left forearm. There was no way Korra could've missed it. It was the only metal adornment in the entire gathering, and she'd seen it before.

            If Korra listened hard enough she could hear Opal and Asami gabbing with one another excitedly, though she couldn't tell what Opal was saying on account of her talking too fast. She caught snippets of words like _different_ and _exotic_ and _gorgeous_ that made her blood boil. There was nothing gorgeous about any of this. Bolin was disgusting and Korra knew it.

            Eventually there were more people finished with their dinners than were still eating, and Korra kept watching while a girl--it had to be a girl--came around to all the men at Bolin's table and presented them all with tiny sandstone cups, and once they'd all been served they promptly knocked the drinks back as one. Less than five minutes later a person who looked suspiciously like Sun and another older woman approached the table, and Bolin and the man who'd been seated beside him stood and walked away.

            Not long after their exodus, Yan stood and called the attention of the gathering, and once they quieted she announced that it was time for _the marking_ and that anyone who wished to attend was welcome to join her in the Chieftain's yurt, but that anyone who wished to stay and continue their dinnertime conversations were just as welcome to do that, too. Then, once her announcement was finished, Yan looked toward Opal, Korra, and Asami, and she said genially, "Come along."

            There was a marked difference between the beginning of the dinner and the present, a shift made noticeable by the general looseness of the crowd, by the fact that their laughter was louder and more frequent than it had been at the start, and Korra wondered exactly how much of that frivolity was because of the cactus juice they'd all apparently mixed in with their water. But no one seemed impaired, not as Korra would imagine they might be, and the moment they entered Yan's yurt, everything went very quiet.

            The yurt had changed in layout since the last time Korra had been inside so that the decorative mats and rugs upon which people sat occupied much more of the space than usual. And rather than the mats being focused toward the center of the place, they were situated in lines facing the back quarter of the yurt, where there sat three pairs of purposefully placed stools with a tiny, three-legged table for each pair. Korra couldn't see exactly what sat atop the tables, but they were definitely tools and none of them looked particularly friendly.

            Yan presented the three with seats behind the apparent stage, in a place with a decent view but not somewhere that would impede the viewing of others, and very shortly after they'd settled in the rest of the yurt began to fill. Korra wasn't sure that everyone from the feast had come to watch whatever this _marking_ was, but the way the people packed inside shoulder to shoulder, standing and sitting, made it seem like everyone had. The place ended up absolutely claustrophobic, and Korra understood why Yan had seated them behind: No one else joined them.

            There weren't any words from then on, and it didn't seem like they were needed. Within a few moments of filling, the yurt went deadly quiet, and very shortly after that the people cleared a narrow aisle from the cloth-covered entrance to the stage, and the ceremony began.

            Korra believed it to be a ceremony because it was the most formal thing she'd seen to date in the sand bender commune. Three women took their places at the stools--Sun among them--and three by three groups of men filed in and sat down, and they stayed there for a while before clearing out so the next group could sit down after them. When the women set to work, Korra suddenly understood the purpose of the tools and implements on the table. Korra understood that when Yan said _marking_ she really meant _tattooing_ , so when Bolin sat on the stool beside Sun something like an hour and a half later, Korra was surprised and oddly indignant.

            She watched him enter the tent alongside the man he'd left with earlier, and while Bolin kept his eyes on the floor a little bashfully, the man beside him absolutely beamed. Bolin didn't look up, not even when he reached the head of the room and Yan presented the two of them joyfully to the congregation.

            If Bolin had looked odd from far away, he looked odder still from up close. It wasn't because he didn't look like himself; he _did_ look like himself now that Korra could actually see him in the light. Rather, there were details about his appearance and his mannerisms that stuck out as obvious and a little weird, and when compounded together, they made Bolin seem like someone else. It was the bright blue of the sleeve he wore over his right arm and breast, the delicate red and yellow flower embroidered on the wrist, the weird boots and the fact that it didn't look like he'd had a proper shower in a very long time. None of this was anything that the Bolin of old would ever have accepted, and it all went without considering the very obvious _marks_ he'd already received and the fact that he was, on the whole, a shade darker than usual.

            Bolin was a sand bender.

            Maybe that meant he wouldn't come home.

            That was a prospect that Korra could live with.

            When Bolin sat facing away from them, Korra heard Opal groan just a little in disappointment, and when Korra looked over, Opal seemed a little downtrodden at the lack of view. But then Asami caught Korra's eye, because Asami was seated down just far enough that she might be able to see Bolin's face and just far enough that he might catch a glimpse of her out of the corner of his eye, and she maintained her rapt, respectful attention while she watched.

            All Korra could see was Sun bent low with her brow all furrowed in concentration, her tongue poking out. She could hear gentle tapping that must have been the instruments in use, and every few seconds Sun would say, "Breathe," and Bolin would breathe deep breaths that were either meant to calm him down or ease the pain. Korra couldn't tell which it was.

            Before long the other man, the one Yan had introduced as Toma, seemed to be finished, and he turned to watch Sun and Bolin with a look of amused interest. This seemed to make the two of them uncomfortable, as they started talking to one another in hushed whispers.

            "Are you almost done?"

            "Stop talking, you'll make me mess up. Breathe. You don't want a crooked line, do you?"

            "No."

            "Then be quiet or I'll--" Sun stopped and Bolin twitched uncomfortably, and Korra could see a look of worry cross Sun's face as she looked up. "Sorry," she said, "my hand slipped."

            "Liar."

            "Cut it out or it'll slip again. And don't laugh, you'll make me mess up."

            Again, the two fell to silence, and after another ten or so minutes the job seemed to be done. Sun sat straight and beamed first at Bolin, then at Yan, and then she and Bolin stood up together. Korra watched Bolin looking down at himself, then at Sun, and she could barely hear him whisper, "Is it supposed to bleed that much?" before Sun punched him playfully about the shoulder and he went all quiet.

            "Tender little flower," Sun chided.

            "Shut up."

            Then they left together, and the others followed them out.

*****

            The line really did hurt. It hurt a lot more than the dots had hurt, and Bolin wasn't sure if it was because Sun had all but stabbed him with her broad-headed needle, if it was because it was such a big mark, or if it was because his ribs were just a tender area. But the line was as straight as it could possibly be and the wound it left behind seemed to have stopped bleeding so that when Sun dabbed at it with her sleeve, nothing came away. Still, it looked gross, but the marks always looked gross for a day or two.

            Things had gone as smoothly as he could've imagined, and with Sun's dutiful guidance, he'd managed to avoid the girls thus far. He hadn't seen them at all during dinner, and he'd found that a little surprising. He had seen them after dinner at the marking ceremony, of course, sitting behind the appointed area on their little padded mats with Yan, but he'd made a conscious effort against looking straight at them. He kept catching glimpses of Asami watching with interest out of the corner of his eye.

            He'd tried to make a conscious effort against _feeling_ them, too, but they all stood out in such contrast with the people Bolin had grown accustomed to feeling that he couldn't ignore them at all. He felt everything through the ground, through his boots, through his feet. He felt Opal's nervousness, which he might've qualified as impatience, and he felt Asami's composure in direct opposition. But he felt Korra, too, and try as he might, he couldn't help that her angry presence made him exceptionally anxious. It made him so anxious that Sun had needed to remind him to breathe, and he'd never had to have that kind of coaching before.

            He was surprised that Korra hadn't killed him on sight.

            "That wasn't so bad, was it?" Sun asked after a time. "They didn't bite."

            Bolin grunted a non-answer.

            "And your kill line is straight."

            "Good. If I'd have known you hadn't practiced I probably wouldn't have let you do it."

            "What was I supposed to practice on? Besides, it's just a line. It's not that difficult."

            Bolin eyed her, and Sun shrank back a little. His sour mood was showing clearly on his face, that much was obvious, and Bolin didn't care to try and cover it up. He didn't have to cover it up, either, not now that he and Sun had found their customary place outside of the celebration proper, sitting on the ground near the edge of the firelight. They sat here often, drinking and talking and watching while people danced around the bonfire, and neither one of them ever seemed to miss participating. Bolin was content to watch, and Sun was apparently content merely having someone to sit with.

            Besides, he figured it would be best to brood somewhere out of the limelight, somewhere that most people wouldn't see him and the few who came up to congratulate him on the kill would have to make an effort. It wasn't like they didn't know where to find him, anyway.

            "I thought you'd be more excited."

            "Like I said, I _was_ excited."

            "Until you saw the airship. I know."

            The two of them fell back into silence because Bolin didn't want to continue talking and Sun didn't seem to know what to say. He'd worried her or frightened her. He'd made her nervous at the very least. He could feel it in her breathing, in the way she shifted uncomfortably on the ground. But Bolin didn't know what to say to make her feel better because he didn't honestly feel that good himself. He certainly wasn't in a mood to provide a pick-me-up.

            Sun drew a breath that sounded like she was going to speak, but it hitched and she didn't say anything at all. She tensed, and when Bolin looked up from his own cup he understood why. How he'd not noticed Asami approaching went well beyond him, but by the time he registered the fact that it was her, it was too late to abandon ship.

            "Can I sit?"

            What was Bolin supposed to say? Was he supposed to tell her that she couldn't sit down? Who was he to do that?

            But Sun looked at him, wide eyed with her eyebrows peaked, and Bolin knew that she wasn't going to help him out. Then he looked up at Asami, who stood there as impassively as it was possible to stand, her face a blank slate, and he knew that she wasn't going to take the initiative, either. It was his decision, and both the girls made that clear.

            All Bolin could do was shrug, and then Asami sat at a comfortable distance, cross legged, and she folded her hands in her lap. Everything about the way she moved was deliberate and respectful, and Bolin noted the lack of nervousness or anticipation in her, the complete blank that she managed to exude in expression and vibration. It wasn't something he was used to. In every way, though, this was how Asami acted when she had a business engagement, when she was meeting someone for the first time and didn't want to give a bad first impression. She had to be doing it on purpose. She must have been testing the water.

            "Does it hurt?" Asami asked after a few minutes, and when Bolin looked at her all confused, she pointed at the mark and repeated herself. "Does it hurt?"

            "Yeah," Bolin said dryly, "it hurts."

            At the exchange, Bolin felt Sun's nervousness flare so that after a moment she said, "I'll go refill our drinks, okay?" and she made to stand but stopped when Bolin put his hand firmly on her forearm and pulled her back down. He didn't say anything because he didn't have to, because the look that Sun gave him made it clear that she understood what he didn't want to say in front of Asami: He needed her to stay and be his security blanket.

            When Bolin glanced up at Sun, she was offering Asami an awkward and slightly fake smile, and Asami nodded back at her with an equally awkward smile of her own. Bolin dropped his eyes back to the ground. He didn't need to smile at them to convey how awkward he felt. He figured it was obvious.

            "What do they mean?" Asami asked tentatively after the silence fell again. "The marks. What do they mean?"

            "They're honor marks," Sun said, and Bolin didn't stop her. Sun sounded excited suddenly, but she'd always been more than happy to expound on the finer nuances of sand bender culture, or she'd always been that way toward Bolin, anyway. "These," she poked the three dots with her index, middle, and ring fingers, "are called points and they say that he's been part of three successful hunts. It means he was part of the group that took the shark down. This one," she drew her finger absently over the line and Bolin flinched and glared at her, but she looked at him with a coy grin and said, "Man up a little," and then turned back to Asami. "That is a kill line, and obviously it says that he got a kill. So, in total he's got three points and one line, which means he's been part of four successful hunts but has only gotten one kill. It's like a tally counter, a way to show off. If you saw Toma, he's got four points, two lines, two points, and another two lines. Well, three after tonight. If you count, that means he's been part of eleven successful hunts and has been credited with five kills. That's why he's so good, see? That's why he's the leader."

            "I see," Asami said, and she seemed genuinely interested. "I guess some congratulations are in order, then." Her eyes were locked on the marks, and Bolin suddenly felt very self-conscious about her staring at him. He'd always been modest around Asami, and for one reason or another that instinct was coming back. He pulled his knees up and hugged at his legs.

            "Where are the other two?" Bolin asked tentatively.

            Asami looked at Bolin, surprised. "The airship," she said plainly. "Korra didn't want to come out again and I told Opal that she needed to stay put. She's... Excited... To see you again."

            Bolin nodded. He understood completely on Korra's count. She probably wanted nothing to do with him and would do everything she possibly could to avoid seeing him, if it could be helped. He felt the same way about her. But Opal was a different story. It didn't make much sense for her to be excited. He'd left her on no better terms than he'd left anyone else. He'd left her on awful terms, actually, because he hadn't said goodbye to her. Yet clearly Korra hadn't mentioned anything about the night she'd spent with him, because if she had, neither Asami or Opal would probably be there, much less be excited to see him.

            "You look good," Asami said. "You look healthy."

            At a loss for an appropriate response, Bolin shook his head in embarrassment.

            "We missed you."

            Bolin couldn't help but glance up to see Asami's gentle smile. It made him even more self-conscious. How could they possibly have missed him? How could they have forgotten all the things he'd done?

            "Can I hug you?"

            The request caught Bolin off guard, and he sat straight, stunned. Then he looked at Sun, and Sun elbowed him in the arm and jerked her head toward Asami quite obviously.

            "I guess," grumbled Bolin.

            If he was honest with himself, Bolin had missed Asami's hugs. She gave the best hugs, though she'd always told him that _he_ gave the best hugs. He supposed it didn't matter, because the contact set a nostalgic jerk in his stomach that made his throat close a little. He hadn't expected something so simple as a hug to make him even remotely emotional. But it did, and to Bolin's relief, Asami held on to him long enough for the wave to roll over him and recede back again. When she pulled away from him, she rubbed at her eyes, too, and Bolin felt a bit better about the whole thing.

            "We really missed you. We were worried."

            "You didn't need to be worried."

            "You disappeared."

            "I had to."

            The statement stopped Asami's arguments dead, and the expression she wore after that was both very hurt and very concerned. For a second, Bolin felt guilty, but then he realized that he had no reason to feel guilty. He hadn't taken an aggressive tone with her. He hadn't even been all that argumentative. He'd said the truth as plainly as it was possible for him to say it, and the rest was on Asami.

            "That's not what you wanted to hear, is it?" Bolin asked.

            "No. It's not."

            With a sigh, Bolin shook his head again and dropped his eyes back down. "Well, I'm sorry," he said thoughtfully, carefully. "I'm sorry that that's not what you wanted, but it's the truth. I had no choice but to go. Yeah, I could probably have gone about it better but I didn't know how to do that at the time. I left you guys because I didn't want to be a burden and I didn't want to hurt you anymore, and I left without ever planning to go back."

            "You weren't going to come home?"

            Bolin nodded. "I didn't feel like I could." He peeked up at her again, and the hurt on her face had deepened. But he had to say the words. He had to make his intentions clear before anyone got the wrong idea, even if it wasn't what they wanted. Bolin drew a very deep breath, looked back at his knees, and said, "And I still don't feel like I can. I'm not going home with you, Asami."

            He felt the shift in her, and to his surprise he felt a similar shift in Sun. He felt all the fire in Asami die away until she felt empty again. She felt hopeless, but the expression on her face didn't convey that. As for Sun, something like excitement jumped inside her, something like surprise and anticipation, and her face conveyed every part of that. Her eyes had widened, her brow furrowed, and her lips pursed together curiously. But Bolin didn't want to entertain them anymore. He was tired.

            "I'm going to go home," Bolin said with finality. As if to punctuate the statement, he grabbed his sandstone cup from the ground beside him and drained the rest of it, and then he stood and looked down at Asami with what he hoped was a soft expression.

            "Bolin," Asami started quietly, "please stay here. I just want to talk--"

            "It was nice to see you," Bolin interrupted. "Thank you for coming."

            At the same time he turned and started across the sand toward his yurt he could swear he heard Sun call his name and a helpless squeak of protest come out of Asami, like she'd wanted to say something but the words stuck in her throat, but Bolin didn't feel bad. Chief Yan and the sand benders had taught him the value of honesty, and he'd been as honest as he could when he'd said the words. He meant them wholeheartedly, and he hoped that Asami understood: He wasn't going home.


	54. The Confession

            The strangest thing was that Bolin didn't panic, that there didn't exist a single shred of it anywhere inside of him even after his brief and perhaps too brusque interaction with Asami. He thought there would be. A pang of _something_ hit him deep in the stomach when he first saw her approaching, but it hadn't developed beyond that. It lingered there in the few moments before Asami sat down, and it swelled when she asked if she could hug him. But then there was the contact, and at that moment the feeling died away and left a kind of weirdness in its wake, what Bolin might have called emptiness but for the tiny echoes of feeling there. Perhaps he was numb.

            As he walked back to his sandstone yurt, he felt a little guilty about how quickly he'd brushed Asami aside. Her interest in him had been genuine, and he knew it because he could feel it in her. The vibrations had been familiar and, in a weird way, a little bit comforting. Or they'd been comforting until he realized what Asami was going to ask, until he realized that the whole reason the three of them were there in the first place was to make him come home.

            He felt a great many things: cruel, stupid, guilty, hasty to dismiss. But he didn't feel panicked.

            Bolin spent a few hours lying atop his bed without ever changing out of his celebratory attire. His mind was too full of other thoughts for the idea of changing to pass through. He couldn't shake the feeling that he'd done something wrong by being so up front with Asami, but staying with the sand benders had been his plan since well before he'd arrived in the desert. He'd never meant to go home. He made that decision almost immediately after setting out from Zaofu because the things he'd done to everyone else capped by the terrible thing he'd done to Korra made it impossible for him to go back. He was too embarrassed. He'd been an idiot.

            But part of his decision to stay away had been made based on the idea that no one would want him to come home, that he'd pushed them away so far and so effectively that no one would ever want him back. The fact that Opal, Asami, and Korra were there rattled enormous cracks into that foundation. The look that Opal had been wearing all night, a dreamy and slightly lustful look, rattled it. That Asami had sought him out to speak privately about the matter of his homecoming rattled it, too. Just about the only thing that hadn't--the only thing that supported his idea--was that Korra had spent the whole night looking like she was ready to explode with angry energy. She'd felt ready to explode. He could feel it a mile away, so clearly that it eclipsed both Opal and Asami's joy and any sense of accomplishment he'd felt in the wake of his successful hunt.

            That was the part that didn't make sense, Bolin thought, because if Korra was angry--and she had every right to be angry--why would she come along?

            It wasn't until the moon began creeping across the open air vent in Bolin's roof that he thought to get ready for bed. He hadn't realized it was getting so late. Thus, he climbed down from his loft and dug about in the wicker box that held all of his clothes, and he changed and sat in the middle of his rug to drink a cup of hot tea that he hoped would calm him enough to sleep. It usually did. It was the same thick green blend that he'd discovered while staying with Hokki and Mei, and ever since then it had served as some strange part of his nightly routine.

            "You should've let her stay to talk."

            Bolin looked up. Sun's voice hadn't startled him, but the posture she assumed while standing in his doorway did. The fact that he hadn't felt her coming had, too. She looked almost angry, and it wasn't the same anger that usually graced her features. This wasn't the same anger that she'd leveled on him when he first arrived, before they'd become friends and exchanged secrets and relied on each other for advice. It was a cold, judgmental anger. It simmered.

            "You want some tea?"

            "No."

            Sun invited herself in the same way she always did, and she flopped down on the rug opposite Bolin. She folded her hands in her lap and stared very hard at him while he sipped at his drink. Bolin tried to act natural.

            "I talked to her for a while," Sun explained. "After you left, she and I talked."

            "What did you talk about?"

            "You, stupid."

            Bolin remembered a time when the very thought of someone calling him _stupid_ would have set him into a rage, yet this time the insult made a strange half-smile tug at his mouth. Sun had called him stupid so many times since he'd arrived in the commune that it may as well have been his given name. She'd called him stupid so many times that it didn't even faze him anymore.

            "I figured as much," Bolin said dryly. "What did you actually talk about?'

            "They want you to go home."

            He sighed again. A bit of frustration was beginning to mount. Sun knew perfectly well what he meant when he asked what she and Asami had talked about; she was just being obtuse. "What did you talk about that I didn't already know?" Bolin didn't try to hide his budding animosity.

            "She told me about you," Sun said casually, apparently unaffected by his shift in attitude. "Well, she told me about you before you came here. It was pretty much the same thing you told me as far as your injury and how stupid you were to everyone. But she told me about how you were before then, even. She talked to me about how you were before all the bad stuff happened to you."

            Bolin looked up at her, and the sad look on Sun's face dulled his anger to a blunt, painful heartache. He didn't know what to say to her. He remembered how he was before all the bad things happened to him, too. He'd been genuinely happy back then. He'd been able to engage in reckless optimism. His heart had been full of love and selflessness and understanding that radiated.

            He missed that feeling.

            "She told me how funny you were. She said that you were really, genuinely funny, not all sarcastic and cynical like you are now. Don't get me wrong, Bo, I like your sense of humor because it's a lot like mine, but I think I'd liked to have met you back then. Asami made it sound like you were a lot happier."

            The next sip of tea tasted bland. Maybe it was because Bolin took it to bide himself some time to think of a response that would relieve the tension building in him. But he couldn't think of anything to say, so he settled on the truth. "I was."

            "So, why don't you go home?" Sun asked, a strange desperation in her voice. "If you were happy back then--happier than you can be here--why wouldn't you want to go back?"

            "Because I screwed up, Sun," Bolin snapped weakly. "Because I burned them."

            "That doesn't seem to matter. It seems to me like they want to help you be happy again."

            "Well, I can't be." The words came out with finality. "I can't go back to being the way I was back then because--"

            "Because why?" Sun interrupted hotly. "Because you don't want to? Because you've got this weird martyr complex?"

            "What are you even talking about?"

            "You just _suffer_. You suffer all the time, even when you shouldn't be suffering because nothing all that bad has actually happened to you, not since you've been here, anyway. You keep punishing yourself and punishing yourself and withholding any happiness, you put up this wall and you refuse to let anything at all through because somehow you think you deserve it."

            "That's not true."

            "Yes, it is! What, you think that because every once in a while you smile or laugh it makes what I'm saying any less true? Sad people laugh all the time, Bolin. They laugh to cover up the fact that they're sad. They laugh to make everyone else think they're okay."

            Silence.

            Sun looked at her hands and fidgeted. It seemed like the sudden anger was spent. "What I'm trying to say is that you keep insisting that you can't be happy, like you never _could_ be happy, but Asami proved that wrong. You were happy once, and there's no reason you shouldn't be that way again."

            "There's a lot of reason."

            "Tell me."

            The demand caught Bolin off guard. He'd had countless conversations with Sun about the horrible things he'd done. He even told her about Korra, and he'd never so much as hinted at that night to anyone else. Sure, Yan knew something happened and she knew that it was bad, but Bolin had never mentioned the details. How, knowing everything that she did, could Sun even _think_ to disbelieve him?

            "Because I cared about them more than anything in the world," Bolin reasoned. His voice was just more than a whisper. If he spoke any louder he felt like he'd break. "I cared about all of them more than I ever cared about myself, and I hurt them all. You know everything I did."

            "And why should what you did in the past keep you from being happy in the future?"

            "Because I'm not a good person."

            "No," Sun said, her tone all motherly and short, "you _weren't_ a good person. You were a jerk. But that's in the past."

            "Is it, though?"

            "You're not going to find out by sitting here with me." Sun stood up and rubbed at her eyes, though when Bolin looked to her he couldn't understand why. There could be no mistaking the sad expression on her face, but there were no tears. There wasn't a hint of that at all. "Go talk to them. Or if you won't go talk to them, let me invite them to come here."

            "Sun..."

            She started toward the exit, and as she stood in the way she turned around and watched the ground. "Look, Bo, I'm not saying that I want you to leave. Honestly, I don't want you to leave because you're about the only person who's ever actually been friendly to me. But it would be selfish of me to try and keep you here because of that. If nothing else, go figure out what your options are. At least that way you can make a well-reasoned decision instead of knee-jerking like you want to do all the time. If you go and talk to them and decide that you should stay, that's great, but I don't want you to miss out on a chance to be happy because you're being stubborn."

            Bolin opened his mouth, but nothing came out. He didn't know what was supposed to come out, and before he could consider it, Sun was gone.

            All the air in the yurt seemed to have grown very heavy, and the weight of it sat atop Bolin like an uncomfortable shroud. He tried to finish his tea but it didn't taste all that good anymore. Incredible how a shift in mood could cause a shift in taste, too.

            Bolin retired to his bed, and he didn't sleep at all. He tossed and turned for a while, unable to get comfortable. Eventually he settled on his back and stared out through the open circle in his roof, watching the clouds and the stars until a sliver of moon began creeping in and a shaft of silvery light fell on his face.

            Sun had been right.

            As he lay there, Bolin decided that he would talk to Asami tomorrow, that he would invite her to discuss the way things were and allow her the chance to convince him to go home. It was only fair, after all. And after she finished explaining why he should go back to Republic City, he would take the time to explain to her why he wanted so desperately to stay so that maybe the two of them could come to an understanding even if they wouldn't agree.

            The morning came before he was ready, and it took Bolin a long time to force himself out of bed. An intense nervousness had taken root in his stomach. Whenever he thought about seeing Asami and talking to her genuinely, the nervousness got worse so that by the time he made his way outside and cast his eyes on the airship he felt ill. So he walked about for a while, trying to work up his courage, until he found himself outside of Sun's yurt debating on whether or not he should go in and ask her for help.

            "What is it you want me to do, exactly?" Sun asked after Bolin mustered his courage, went inside, and explained himself. "Go over there and invite the girls to come see you?"

            "No," Bolin said, "just Asami."

            "Why?"

            "Because I'm not ready for the other two."

            "And what is your plan?"

            Bolin shrugged and dropped his chin onto his hand. "I'm going to talk to her, just like you said last night." He paused, tired of the explaining and a little bit frustrated at his floundering. "Look, you were the one that suggested I 'weigh my options' or whatever it was, weren't you? Just go get her and meet me at your mom's."

            "Why?"

            "Because I need to talk to her, too."

            Sun heaved a sigh and got to her feet, tossing her embroidery lazily aside. "Fine," she chided, "but don't expect me to be your babysitter this time."

            "I don't need a babysitter."

            She was gone before he could finish arguing.

            After a time, Bolin got up and strode purposefully toward Yan's enormous yurt, where he found her in the back room poking at what looked like a sand shark bone with a small metal utensil. She was so engrossed that she didn't hear him knock against the wall, and when Bolin uttered a sheepish, "Hello?" she seemed to startle.

            Bolin didn't let her get a word out. "I need to talk to you," he said at once, "and I need you to be straight about it."

            Yan put down her things and shifted in her chair, casting an interested look on Bolin that might at one time have made him squirm. It was the look she gave someone when she was preparing to read them. It was the look she gave when she was prepared for lies.

            "I know that you know why the girls came here from Republic City," Bolin started, slower now that he had Yan's undivided attention. He shuffled into the room and dropped heavily on one of the sitting pillows, but he didn't look up. "They want me to go home with them, but I'm not so sure I want to. I'm not so sure I'm ready to."

            "And you're looking for me to tell you one way or another what you should do."

            The statement flustered Bolin more than he thought it would. It was strange. Yan's straightforward way of discussing delicate matters had long since stopped bothering him. "No, not exactly," Bolin said. "I'm looking for advice. See, Asami came to talk to me last night after the ceremony and I was... Well, I was really rude to her, and I spent all night lying awake thinking about it and feeling all guilty. So, I sent Sun to go get her so that I could give her a second chance and talk like adults."

            "That seems like a reasonable thing to do."

            "But I have to decide what I want to do," Bolin argued. "No, that's not right. I _know_ what I want to do, and what I want to do is stay here. I don't want to go back to Republic City."

            "Why?"

            Bolin did look up now, and it was in confusion. "What?"

            "Why don't you want to go home?"

            "I just had this conversation with Sun."

            "Well, I'm not Sun. Tell me why you don't want to go back. What reservations do you have that would prevent you from going?"

            "Well, for starters, _this_ is my home now." When Bolin paused, he heard a humoring _hmmm_ noise come out of Yan. It irritated him. "And I messed up a lot of things before I left them, besides. I left without any intent to go back there. I burned every bridge there was to burn. You know that. I _can't_ go back."

            "Why?"

            Bolin floundered. He stammered and spluttered his indignation. "Because I hurt them!"

            "And yet, they're here to take you home."

            Frustrated all over again, Bolin dropped his face into his hands. He didn't know what to say at all.

            "Listen," Yan said, a gentle command, "you've got to get it out of your head that the world is black and white. Nothing is absolute, and you know that. You've done such a good job of accepting that and learning to cope with your problems, but I don't understand why you won't budge on this one thing. The choice is yours to make, Bolin, and you _do_ have a choice. We've discussed this whole issue of control before. Don't you remember? That's half your problem. Let me lay it out for you plainly, then: You're in control of this decision. You can stay here, I won't exile you from our commune. You've been too good a member of the community for me to do that. But you can go, too, if you want. There's nothing stopping you from leaving this place and traveling back home with those girls. There are no walls around you, nothing holding you to the ground. You're free to roam as you please regardless of what you did to anyone else or what anyone else did to you. You're in complete control of this situation, you just have to be willing to make the choice that's best for you. And you and I both know that you can't make that kind of decision with such a closed mind."

            Silence.

            "You wanted advice. Here's my advice: Allow yourself to consider your options without these silly self-imposed boundaries you keep putting down."

            Bolin laughed gently.

            "What?"

            He shook his head. "That's almost exactly what Sun said."

            Again, Yan made that irritating _hmmm_ sound, and that seemed to be the end of the talking. There wasn't much else that Bolin could think to say, anyway.

            It seemed for the best, because when he finally got the nerve to stand and exit her sitting room, Sun and Asami stood waiting in the larger chamber. They didn't notice him at first. Asami stood admiring a piece of stretched sand shark skin that Yan had put up for decoration, citing the oddness in its coloring. It looked like Sun was explaining something. She was gesturing at the hanging with one finger, drawing a line down its length. But then Sun must have caught a glimpse of him, because she turned on him very suddenly.

            "It's about time," Sun said dryly, "we've been out here for almost ten minutes."

            Bolin tried to shoot a distinct look at Sun, a look that said he didn't need her attitude, but it didn't seem like he hit the mark. She crossed her arms and looked smug instead, and by this time Asami had turned around, too. She wore a decidedly _not_ smug expression.

            "I'm glad you reconsidered," Asami said.

            Bolin wanted to tell her not to get ahead of herself, but he kept his mouth shut and nodded instead, his eyes on the ground. Then he drew a deep breath and looked to Sun again, an idea in his mind. "I think I can take it from here," he said gently. "You mind if I take Shibu for a while?"

            "Don't care," said Sun with a wave of her hand. "You take her enough anyway without asking me permission. Besides, I'm in charge of the water tonight so I've got to go get ready. It's not like I'm going to miss her."

            "Thanks."

            Sun nodded a quick good-bye to Asami, and as she walked past Bolin she said in an undertone, "You know where I'll be if you need me." Then she was gone.

            Bolin met Asami's eyes for only a second, just long enough to say, "Come on," and nod his head toward the exit, and when he started off he hoped she would get the idea.

            Asami followed Bolin silently all the way back to Sun's yurt, to the small covered sandstone enclosure where Shibu spent her days off, lounging amongst a carpet of straw that Sun brought in every third week from somewhere east of Chameleon Bay for a pretty hefty price.

            Beside him, Asami made a noise full of awe, and when he glanced over to her, she looked a little thunderstruck, too. "What is it?" she gaped.

            "This is Shibu," Bolin said, gesturing to the antelope. In the same motion he swung open the gate and entered her enclosure. Shibu perked up at the sound of his voice and cast an eager look on him. "She's a fox antelope. She comes out with me when I head into the desert."

            "Oh. Why?"

            It was an innocent enough question, Bolin realized, but it made the conversation hit home sooner than he'd hoped. He waited until Shibu was up and had stretched and exited her enclosure to respond. "She makes sure I stay safe," he said.

            "Safe from what? The sand sharks?"

            "Not exactly. Come on." Bolin gestured for Asami to follow, and he headed back toward his yurt with Shibu on his left and Asami on his right. He figured it would be best to talk and walk. "See, being in the desert is hard on me sometimes. I always bring her out with me so that if something happens she can make sure I get back home."

            "If something happens?"

            "If I get hurt, get in trouble, pass out."

            "Pass out?"

            Bolin waved the question off. He could explain later.

            The stop at his yurt was much faster than the stop at Yan's or Sun's. He ducked inside just long enough to grab the travel bag he used on his hunting trips, which contained water and food and the now beat-up and somewhat dingy tent he'd purchased in the Misty Palms Oasis what felt like eons ago. Asami got to poke her head inside, but she made no mention of it. She didn't ask questions and didn't protest when Bolin ushered her back out.

            It took until this point for Bolin to gain his courage. He'd known all along what needed to be said, but he hadn't known how to say it. As the three of them breached the commune's border, he put his hand between Shibu's horns as some weird kind of reassurance, and he spoke as firmly as he could. "Look, I was a jerk to you last night. I had no right to treat you the way I did. You came a long way to talk to me and I blew you off without letting you get in a word. That was wrong of me, and I'm sorry I did it."

            "Well, it was kind of wrong for me to back you into a corner like that," Asami replied. The ease with which she conceded the point felt irksome. She hadn't even accepted his apology. "I shouldn't have caught you off guard like that."

            "You didn't catch me off guard. I saw your airship the day I got back from the field. It was just a matter of time before you found me."

            "I suppose so."

            The quiet set in for a while, until the commune disappeared behind rolling dunes and the sand began kicking up in the wind. By now, Bolin was used to this sort of weather, was used to the hardships of desert travel, but he didn't consider Asami's discomfort with the situation until he felt a subtle shift in the cadence of her stride. She slowed, and Bolin worried that she might stop altogether, but she kept pressing on in the quiet until a modestly sized sandstone structure appeared between the dunes, and Bolin pointed at it.

            "That's where we're going."

            He'd meant to bring her here all along, to the only truly private place he could think of where the two of them could talk without fear of interruption. It was the only place he could think of where he wouldn't be afraid that Korra or Opal--or Korra _and_ Opal--would sneak up and catch him unprepared. The idea of speaking candidly with Asami was nerve-wracking enough on its own, the idea of speaking to all three of the girls seemed impossible.

            The structure was simple, as far as communal structures were concerned, was little more than a hollow pillar raised from the earth and solidified. From its open, unprotected doorway a person could see an enormous expanse of the Si Wong Desert rippling along in the gentle wind. On a clear enough day when the winds were still, a person could spot in the distance the sand shark hunting grounds and, if they were very lucky, could watch the animals breaching the sand. The hunters came here for scouting. Bolin had come here to talk.

            As the three entered, Bolin motioned Asami toward the room's only furnishing, a small round sandstone table with two smaller sandstone stools, and while she situated herself there, Bolin situated Shibu out of the way with enough water to last the rest of the night, and the antelope curled up as she was wont to do and closed her eyes lazily. Then Bolin flopped onto the stool opposite Asami, and the swarm of butterflies that had laid dormant in his stomach for so long suddenly sprang back to life.

            "What is this place?"

            "Scouting hut."

            "Why'd you bring me all the way out here?"

            "Privacy."

            When Bolin looked to Asami, she seemed a little distraught. It must have been his shortness in answering. But he didn't know exactly where to start the conversation, and that meant that he needed to wait for Asami to take the initiative instead.

            She didn't wait long.

            "So, why the change of heart?" she asked plainly after a few moments. "Why'd you decide to talk to me again? After last night I figured that you'd be done."

            "Like I said, I figured out that I was being a jerk and decided that I needed to fix it."

            "Oh."

            Bolin felt Asami's spirits drop. Clearly, she'd been hoping for something more, so he added in afterthought, "And I decided that maybe instead of being a stubborn idiot I should listen to what you had to say before I made a decision."

            Asami relaxed.

            "How did you find me?" The question had nagged at Bolin since he'd first laid eyes on the airship, and it came out of his mouth without his thinking about it. He hoped the question had come out conversationally enough. "I kind of figured that after such a long time you guys weren't looking for me anymore."

            Asami shook her head. "No. We'd been looking for you the whole time. Su had three quarters of Zaofu out in the mountains the day we found out you'd gone, and she spent the next two weeks sending out parties to look. After that we organized searches of our own out of Republic City, but we never found anything. We offered up a reward for anyone who could tell us where you were, but that just forced us to wade through a bunch of false reports and bad leads. Mako was furious about it. Either way, we never stopped."

            The mention of Mako made Bolin's stomach twist. It wasn't that Bolin never thought about Mako, but that he avoided it when he could because the thought of Mako all alone in Republic City made him keenly regretful. The idea that he'd forced their separation so shortly after their reunion made Bolin feel sick.

            "Well, you did a heck of a good job of hiding, wherever you were. A couple weeks ago we got a letter from--"

            "Hokki."

            "Yeah, how'd you know?"

            "Because he warned me that someday he'd probably take you guys up on your five-hundred-yuan reward."

            The look Asami gave to him made her confusion very, very clear.

            "I don't remember which of you it was that went to Lanxi, but he was down there selling off some supplies and someone gave him a flyer. He brought it back to me, and a couple weeks after that, I left. We knew you would find me up there. It was a really, really tiny town in the mountains, a village full of nonbenders and, if I’m honest, the people were pretty poor. A lot of them did trading in Lanxi. It was only a matter of time before one of them got a flyer and contacted you, so I got out."      

            "You didn't want us to find you?"

            "No. I wasn't ready to be found."

            "That's what the letter said. It said that you weren't ready to come home yet, but it made it out less like you didn't want to come home and more like you just... Like you weren't _fit_ to come home yet."

            "That's because I _wasn't_ fit to come home yet. I’m still not sure I am."

            There lingered a few moments of uncomfortable silence before Asami asked, "How'd you end up there?"

            "It's a long, kind of boring story."

            Asami looked downcast again.

            "I headed south straight out of Zaofu into the forest, and I skirted the mountains for a while until I ended up in Gaoling. Stayed there for a few weeks until... Until the firebenders attacked it... I ran away in a panic and left all my good clothes and money behind."

            "You were there when Gaoling was attacked?"

            "Yeah," Bolin said, surprised by Asami's surprise. "I'd been making money fighting as a nonbender in the Earth Rumble Arena."

            "But we checked Gaoling."

            "You wouldn't have found me. I didn't use my real name and nobody knew I was an earthbender."

            "But you used your real name in Lanxi, or at least when you were staying around there. Otherwise Hokki wouldn't have known who you were."

            Bolin nodded his agreement. "When I left Zaofu I was having some problems. Wow, that's an understatement. I was having a lot of problems, and one of them was that I didn't like the person I was. I didn't _know_ who I was. I used a fake name and a fake story in Gaoling and a little way beyond, but I used my real name with Hokki and Mei. They didn't find out I was an earthbender until Hokki got that flyer from you all."

            "And after that?"

            "After that I came down here."

            "But how'd you get the idea to come here? Who thinks to go to the desert?"

            "Hokki thought of it. He and Mei were really good to me. They gave me a place to stay and helped me start figuring out how to function again. They got me back on my feet and got me moving around, put me to some really hard work that started forcing me back into shape. Mei taught me how to read again, or she started to, anyway. I've been working on that ever since. But I told Hokki the whole story, everything I did including all the stuff in Fire Fountain City, and he said he knew of this sand bender commune whose people might be able to help me come to grips with my earthbending. I didn't have anything else to lose, so I set out."

            "And you've been here ever since."

            "Yeah. I've been here since a few weeks into winter, but I haven't had a calendar so I couldn't tell you how long it's actually been."

            "A little over ten months since you left Zaofu."

            It was Bolin's turn to say, "Oh."

            The quiet set in again, and for a time it seemed that Asami was content to sit in it. She joined Bolin in looking out at the desert, and even though little could be seen beyond the blowing sands, she commented a few times on how pretty it all was. She wasn't lying, either. Bolin could feel her honesty.

            It was strange how comfortable it all felt, Bolin thought, because he'd imagined that this whole interaction would be rife with awkwardness and difficulty. But then, Asami had never been all that difficult to talk to, at least not before he'd alienated her. She'd always been the one to whom he took his problems when he couldn't work them out on his own, and he'd lost count of the number of truly meaningful conversations he'd shared with her about life and love and so many other intimate issues. He supposed it was only natural that this would go the same way.

            When Asami spoke again she seemed hesitant in every way from the tone of her voice to the vibrations she pushed through the earth. Bolin didn't notice the change in her until she uttered a very uncertain, "So," but when he clued in to it, the change was unmistakable. She seemed on the edge of frightened, and that made Bolin curious.

            "So?" Bolin prompted.

            "Are... Are you better?"

            "That depends on what you mean when you say _better_."

            "Well, you seem less..." Asami stopped and pulled a face of frustration. Clearly, she was trying to be tactful about whatever it was she was thinking, but it seemed she was failing. She sighed and started again. "You seem more stable."

            She was trying to address the issue of craziness. He should've guessed.

            "Just say what you're trying to say and stop worrying so much about offending me," Bolin said, and though his voice had taken on a stern tone, Asami didn't shy away. "You're not going to scare me off."

            "Well, you were kind of insane when you left," Asami explained, "and you were all weak and sad and... Crazy."

            Bolin held up his hands, and Asami stopped. "I don't know if you'd still call me crazy," he conceded, "but I'm not all square yet, either."

            "How so?"

            "I still panic. It's not as often now, and I've learned how to deal with it, kind of, but there are still times when I can't control it. I have nightmares three or four times a week."

            "About Baihe Island?"

            "Yeah, about that. And I have nightmares about the collapse, about Ko--" Bolin stopped himself before he finished the word and cleared his throat before beginning again. "I have nightmares about the awful things I did to you all. I don't sleep well."

            "I'm sorry."

            "Don't be sorry, it's not like you dropped the building on my face or made me a jerk."

            "But you're better, too," Asami prompted. "Besides that stuff."

            "I wouldn't get too far ahead of yourself there, either."

            "What do you mean?"

            "I'm assuming that you mean I'm closer to how I was before I woke up, right? You mean that I'm the same dumb goof you met like five years ago and grew up with. If that's the case, you're dead wrong, and I'm really sorry to say it, but that guy's never coming back. All the stuff that happened after the collapse _broke_ me. And I don't mean it broke me down. It literally broke my brain. I've got panic problems, but we've talked about that. I have nightmares, and we talked about that, too. I have problems empathizing with people. Sometimes I can’t think and it makes me do stupid things. I've got problems with anger. It used to hit me so hard that I couldn't stop it and I'd lash out at people and hit them and bend at them and yell, but I figured out a part of what makes it happen and most of the time that lets me head it off before it gets too bad."

            "What triggers it?"

            "Control. If I feel like I don't have any control over a situation I either panic about it or I get angry about it. It depends. I guess to put it as plainly as I can, I've still got all the problems I had before I left Zaofu. None of that stuff has changed. The only difference is that I've started learning how to deal with it so that I can function like a regular person again."

            "Then if you're better, or getting better, then why don't you want to come home?"

            Bolin couldn't help a resigned grin and a shake of his head. He knew the conversation would come to this, he just didn't know how long it would take or whether Asami would go at it straight on or take some weird oblique angle. It was for the best that she asked straightforwardly, and it was for the best that he answered in kind.

            "I don't want to go back because I hurt you all too badly. I was a bad person when I was with you all, before I left you, that is. Maybe it's me being cowardly, but I don't want to have to face everyone after all the awful things I did."

            "Well, for my part, I'm ready to move on. I'm ready to have you back with the team again."

            "And how does everyone else feel about that?"

            Bolin asked the question deliberately because there was an enormous, rabid elephant-rhino in the room that needed to be addressed. Sure, Asami might be ready for him to come home, and maybe Opal was ready for him to come home, too, but what about Korra? She'd seemed so full of pent up anger when Bolin caught glimpses of her that he couldn't imagine how she'd be ready to interact with him again.

            Suddenly, Bolin realized: Korra hadn't told. She couldn't have. It just didn't add up. If Korra had mentioned something, one of two things would have happened: Either Asami would currently share in Korra's animosity because no one could get past what he'd done, or Korra wouldn't have been so angry because Asami had helped her to cope. If Korra had said something, then she and Asami would more than likely share the same feelings toward him. That they were so opposite in their reception told Bolin everything he needed to know, and that complicated things.

            "Opal is ready," Asami mused while Bolin thought, apparently oblivious to his sudden realization, "and Mako is definitely ready. He's been a little bit lost without you around, you know. You always kept him afloat when work got to be too much, and without you there he doesn't take very good care of himself. Korra and I are around to help him, yeah, but we're not as good as you are at getting him to focus on what's really important. He's buried in his work."

            "What about Korra?"

            Asami furrowed her brow. "She's been weird lately. She was really torn up when you left and stayed in Zaofu for a couple weeks helping to look for you. I didn't think she'd ever stop crying the morning she figured out you'd gone."

            Bolin propped his chin on his fist and watched Asami as closely as he dared, focused on her tone and her expression, on the way she felt. Her explanation was utterly innocent. She wasn't trying to cover anything up. Her contemplation was genuine.

            "But she got better," Asami continued, her eyes on the table. "After a little while I think she started getting over it, but any time we mentioned you she got all uptight and quiet. Then the letter came, and she's been sort of angry ever since. I think she's resentful."

            "I guarantee she's resentful."

            Asami looked up. "What?"

            "Why do you think that?" Bolin asked coolly. "Why do you think she's resentful?"

            "Just the way she's been acting. She finally got over the fact that you left without a word and then you come back in at the drop of a hat. We spent so much time and effort searching for you only for it to come to nothing, and then suddenly here you are again. If I spent as much energy as Korra did on being sad about you and getting over the fact that you left, I'd be angry, too."

            With a nod of understanding, Bolin dropped his hands to the table and his eyes followed. Once upon a time he might've started fidgeting, but not now. Once upon a time he might've panicked at the very idea of confessing what he'd done to anyone at all, but not now. He felt surprisingly calm about the whole thing, because in the strangest way, no bad could come from speaking up. In the worst case--or maybe the best case--Asami would change her mind about wanting Bolin to come home and he'd end up staying with the commune, no worse for the wear and with arguably the biggest conflict of his life resolved. Otherwise, Asami wouldn't change her mind and would continue to insist Bolin come home, and if she wanted him in her life even after finding out the awful thing he'd done, maybe it was best to go back home with them after all. If someone could forgive him or at least understand his perspective, maybe there was hope.

            "What did she tell you?" Bolin asked, quiet but steady.

            "About what?"

            "About me. You said she wouldn't stop crying when she figured out I was gone, so what did she tell you about me?"

            "Nothing. She just said that you were gone, that she went to your room, you weren't there, and she couldn't find you anywhere. That was all we got out of her."

            Another understanding nod, and Bolin got to his feet. It wasn't that he felt like pacing, but there was some nervousness beginning to build inside him that demanded he move around. Maybe it was habit. This was what he did to stave off the panic.

            "Well, I'm going to tell you, then," he said once he got to the open entryway. He leaned against the jamb and crossed his arms, but didn't look back at the table. He looked out at the desert, the wind in a lull, and then he closed his eyes. "I can tell you exactly why Korra couldn't stop crying, and why she was so upset, and why she's angry now."

            "Bolin?" He felt Asami stand up, suddenly very, very nervous.

            "Sit down," Bolin said gently, and Asami's nervousness snapped to surprise, but she eventually sat back down and relaxed. With a very deep breath, Bolin began. "See, I did some awful things before I left Zaofu, and I know that. I did awful things to Opal, I said awful things to you. We all know how I killed those people when we went to rescue Mako. I was totally out of my mind. I'm not saying that as an excuse, either, I'm saying it because it's the truth. I did horrible, horrible things and we all know that." He stopped and sighed, but it was a sigh of sadness instead of nerves.

            "Bo?"

            "All those horrible things are nothing compared to what I did to Korra. She was about the only person who actually tolerated me toward the end of things, or at least that's the way I saw it. She wanted to stay close to me and I couldn't tell you why. She had some weird crush on me or something stupid, or maybe it was because she genuinely wanted to help me. It doesn't really matter why she was that way, it just matters that she _was_. She insisted on staying close. I decided to leave... Well, I got it in my head that I was going to go pretty soon after we got home from Baihe Island. It's the first thought I can remember having after that. I was so out of my mind and afraid of myself after what I did out there that I was convinced that I was going to hurt all of you in the best case, or kill all of you in the worst. Everything I did after that thought latched onto my mind was designed to drive all of you farther away from me to make leaving that much easier for everyone. I figured that if you all hated me, you wouldn't follow me. If you all hated me, you wouldn't be upset that I left, and I believed that that if I got out of Zaofu I could save all of you from me, or what I thought I was.

            "Like I said, the problem was Korra. She wasn't like the rest of you. I figured out pretty quick that if I got aggressive and angry with the rest of you that you would back off and leave me alone. If I got physical with the rest of you then it made you afraid of me, so that's what I did. That's how I distanced myself from you. But it didn't matter how aggressive I got with Korra because she didn't seem to care. There was literally no evil that I could do that would make her abandon me. So, I went the other way."

            "Went the other way?"

            "Yeah. I went the other way." Bolin heaved a huge breath and slumped against the doorframe, his eyes on his shoes. The shame he'd harbored over what he'd done was cropping up again. He shook his head against it. "I told you, she had some kind of crush on me. I think you know that. I think she told you that. I used that against her. The night before I left I went to her room with... I don't really know what I meant to do. The goal was to turn those feelings against her. I wanted to ruin all those good feelings she had about me but I wasn't sure how exactly to do it. And I wanted to kiss her. Everyone got so mad because I apparently did it when I was all brain-dead but I didn't remember it, and I was angry about it. I wanted to know what I was missing out on. So, I did it."

            When Bolin glanced at Asami, she was watching him raptly, a look of mixed confusion and fear and anger on her face. But she didn't move when her eyes met his. Her hands stayed clasped in her lap. Her eyebrow gave the slightest anticipatory twitch.

            "I slept with her. Then I left."

            As soon as the words came out, Bolin's face dropped toward the floor. He couldn't maintain the eye contact. He was too ashamed, too afraid of how Asami's expression would change. He was too afraid of what she would say.

            But Asami didn't say anything. She sat there quietly and he stood there quietly, and all Bolin could hear was the gentle desert breeze picking back up and Shibu's gentle snoring from the corner somewhere behind him. He wondered if the quiet was supposed to hurt, if the hurt now was better or worse than the hurt would be when Asami finally came to grips with what he'd said, when she finally reacted.

            Her reaction wasn't anything like what he expected.

            "Tell me more," she said.

            Bolin couldn't help but snap to mortified attention when he heard the phrase. There was no anger anywhere on Asami's face, no anger in the vibrations she sent through the earth. It was so much more complicated than that. "What?"

            "You're right. You did a lot of horrible things to us. You said a lot of horrible things. But there isn't a single time that I can remember where you said or did something that you weren't absolutely crippled by it. When you threw Opal and you spent the next three or four days starving yourself and not talking and not sleeping? It seemed to me like you turned every bad thing you did to other people back on yourself ten times worse. You might've acted like a bad person, but you never _were_ a bad person. You were never the kind of person who would do something so evil to someone he loved for no good reason other than hurting them. You literally just told me that: You wanted to leave to protect us from whatever danger you thought you were posing to us. So, what were you thinking with Korra?"

            Bolin gaped.

            "While you were with her were you thinking about how horrible you were going to make her feel?"

            "No."

            "Then what were you thinking about?"

            "I... I don't know."

            "Yes, you do." Asami snapped the words, but then she paused, the heat going out of her. She was understandably upset, Bolin thought, but she was doing a remarkable job of restraining it. "I want you to tell me what you were thinking, because that's what's going to determine how angry I get here. I'm not happy about it, if what you just told me is true. Well, it has to be true. It makes everything make so much sense. It explains it all. Honestly, I'm really unhappy about it. But I need you to tell me your side of this. What were you thinking?"

            "I was confused," Bolin said, and it was the honest truth. "There was a part of me that needed..." He stopped and shook his head. He didn't know what he was trying to say. "I wanted to... I did all that terrible stuff to you all. I pushed you all away so I was completely alone, or I felt completely alone, and there was part of me that wanted to feel like someone didn't completely despise me. I wanted to feel like a real person, not whatever busted up, brain-damaged psychopath I was at the time. Korra kept extending all this love toward me and she kept being so nice no matter what awful things I did. I don't know. I was looking for something in her, but I didn't find it, so in the end it didn't matter. I don't know that it would've mattered if I had found what I was looking for, either, because then I would still have used her. I don't know if that makes what I did any better or if it makes it worse. I went to her room with every intent of hurting her, but that got lost until after everything was all said and done, and by then I was too afraid to face up to what I did, so the old stand-by of _get out of Zaofu_ kicked back in and I went."

            "And?"

            "And I've never regretted anything more in my life. I told you earlier that when I left Zaofu, I didn't like who I was. That wasn't exactly right. I hated myself more than any person has any right to hate himself. I hated myself so much that I couldn't even think about killing myself because that would be too easy, because killing myself would've been too kind a punishment for the things I'd done, for the thing I did to Korra. I knew what I’d done would hurt her and I had done so much wrong to all of you that I didn't want to be Bolin anymore. I couldn't live with myself, so I detached. I pretended to be someone else. I called myself Ping and I told anyone who asked that I was a nonbender coming off a short stay in Zaofu so that no one would think to trace me back there. And I didn't just _say_ I was a nonbender. I didn't earthbend for... For _months_. I stayed with Hokki for what, three or four months? Not a single pebble that whole time, and the only time I earthbent before that was when I fled from the attack in Gaoling, because if I hadn't done it I'd have died and I was too panicked to think any better."

            "Are you sorry?"

            All Bolin could do was nod. He couldn't even bring himself to open his eyes. He didn't know when he'd closed them, didn't know when his face had turned back to the floor yet again.

            "Then we can make it work."

            He didn't know if it was a laugh that came out of him, but there was some short, clipped kind of noise that drew Asami to her feet, and the lump in Bolin's throat made it impossible to tell her to sit back down again. And then she was beside him, her arms around him in what might've been the first genuinely compassionate gesture he'd encountered since leaving Lanxi, because as much as Sun tried, her hugs couldn't hold a candle to Asami's.

            They stood together for a long time that Bolin spent working to hold back emotions he'd not expected to come forth. It was hard, with Asami so near, with her generosity and compassion. She should hate him. She should despise him as much as Korra despised him, but somehow, even through her obvious anger at his admission, she'd found the capacity somewhere inside her to forgive him. And maybe she hadn't even forgiven him--he could never know that--but perhaps she would try to understand.

            Bolin and Asami sat largely in quiet for the rest of the afternoon, and it was after sundown when Bolin roused Shibu from her nap and the three of them headed back to the commune. Even after so long, the butterflies still fluttered about in Bolin's stomach because no matter how many times he tried to think about it, he couldn't imagine where things might go from here.

            "So earlier when I asked you why you bring this animal out with you, you kind of dodged my question," Asami said as they neared the commune's border. "You want to elaborate?"

            "You remember when we were coming home from Baihe Island, when I collapsed and you and Korra kept feeling around on me."

            "And your heartbeat was all messed up."

            "Yeah. That didn't really go away."

            "What? Are you okay? What's wrong?"

            "No, no, it's not happening right now. But if I strain myself too hard it can kick in and... Well it's not good when it happens. Shibu comes out with me so that if I feel it coming on, I can get back home."

            Asami looked troubled.

            "It's better now than it was when I got here, I'll put it that way. It happens less frequently now, and for the most part I know what makes it happen. I can't run real long distances anymore. I'm good on the sprint, but not much else, and if I panic it makes me more prone to it."

            "Oh."

            Bolin stopped outside of the chieftain's yurt in the center of the commune and glanced out toward the airship. "Do you want a cup of tea?"

            "I should probably head back."

            Bolin nodded. He couldn't blame Asami for not wanting to stick around for too much longer. She’d already been gone all day. "What are you going to tell them? Opal and Korra, I mean."

            "What do you want me to tell them?"

            He shrugged. "I'd rather be the one to tell Opal. And as for Korra, I guess that's your call. You can tell her that you know what happened, that I explained everything to you, but..." He paused and dug his toes nervously into the sand. "But don't apologize to her for me, okay? I want to apologize to her myself, if I can figure out how to do it."

            "Well, you walk up to her and say--"

            "No," Bolin interrupted Asami a little more sharply than he intended. "I can't just tell her. Words don't mean a thing coming from a guy that did the things I did. I don't know how I'm going to do it, but I'll have to show her I'm sorry some other way. I'll have to prove it through what I do, not through what I say, and even then, I don't know that she'll let me. I wouldn't blame her if she didn't."

            "Does that mean you're going to come home with us?"

            "It means I'm going to weigh my options."

            Asami nodded, and after that she pecked him gently on the cheek and walked off without looking back. He watched her go until she disappeared between the yurts, and then he headed back to Sun's. At the very least, he needed to drop Shibu off. At the best, he might get in a few words.

            Sun was there, as he expected, but instead of working on her embroidery she was just sitting, reclined against the support of her loft looking contemplative and perhaps a little troubled. Still, Bolin knocked, and when Sun looked toward the entrance, he poked his head in.

            "I put Shibu back in her pen and gave her some extra--"

            "Get in here, you idiot."

            He went in.

            "Well?"

            Bolin practically crumpled onto the floor opposite Sun, and he folded his hands in his lap and now he did fidget. It didn't matter if he fidgeted in front of Sun. There was nothing he could do in front of her that would embarrass him anymore.

            "I told her everything."

            "Everything?"

            " _Everything_."

            "And how'd she take it?"

            "It seems like she still wants me to go home with them."

            "Are you going to?"

            He didn't know. He really, truly didn't know. Bolin shook his head and kept at his fidgeting.

            "You're considering it now, though, aren't you?"

            He nodded.

            "Well, let's iron it out, then. Why do you want to stay here?"

            "I can be successful here. I can live a good, happy life here and make something of myself."

            "You can do that in Republic City, too."

            Bolin looked up. Though her face stayed firm and blank, tears rimmed Sun's eyes. He didn't like to see her cry.

            "What's the matter?" Bolin asked.

            "I knew it was going to happen sooner or later," Sun said sadly. "I knew you weren't going to stay forever."

            Wasn't he, though?

            "Bo, let's be honest with each other here: You've been here half a year, right? And how many friends outside of me and your hunting party do you have?"

            Bolin opened his mouth to answer, but Sun cut him off.

            "None, that's how many. And I don't even know that I'd call the hunting party your friends as much as I'd call them some stupid fraternity that accepts you because of your lavabending. Don't get me wrong, they like you, but if you were just some generic earthbending bozo they wouldn't give you the time of day."

            "Ouch."

            "You know I'm right.”

            He did.

            "And since you got here, how often have you talked about the life you left behind? How many times have you mentioned those girls?"

            Now he thought on it, he'd talked about them all the time. It hadn't always been pleasant conversation, to be fair, but he couldn't recall a serious discussion where he hadn't referenced something that had happened back home or in Zaofu, even if it was something that happened years and years ago.

            Sun deflated a bit in Bolin's silence, and he felt it. He wasn't surprised to see her eyes on the floor. He wasn't surprised to hear a well-concealed quiver in her voice when she said, "This has never been your home, Bolin. This is just another stop on your way back to where you belong. You and I both know that. We've always known that, no matter how much we played pretend like you were going to stay here."

            "Sun," Bolin pleaded, "listen..."

            "I've listened to you a lot," she said in interruption. "I've listened to you two or three or four times a week for the last several months when you showed up in the middle of the night all riddled with panic. I think it's time you shut up for a few minutes and listened to me."

            Bolin shut up.

            "I wasn't kidding when I said that I didn't want you to leave. I'll miss you. But it would be selfish of me to make you stay when there are people--a lot of people--who are waiting for you back in the city. You told me when you first got here that you showed up so that we could help you get back on your feet again. You came here so that we could help you strengthen your earthbending and get back into shape, and all the emotional stuff was just an extra benefit. My mom can't stand to see people suffering like you were, so she was bound to help you there. But let's be honest here, Bo, we can't help you anymore. We've done everything there is to do for a guy in your situation, and any progress you make from here on out won't be the result of our coaching. Anything you do from now on will be totally on you, and it doesn't matter where you're at. You can make progress anywhere. It just seems to me like the last thing you might need help with is repairing your old relationships, and who better to help you with that than the people you left behind?"

            There was nothing to be said in argument, and Bolin knew it. Sun was absolutely right, but she usually was when it came to matters like this.

            "You've been thinking about this all day, haven't you?" Bolin asked.

            Sun just nodded. Then she sniffled. She rubbed at her nose with the back of her hand. "Go home, you jerk."

 

            The rest of that night Bolin racked his brain over the circumstance, over all the things that Sun had said. He thought about his progress, because in the past whenever he reached a plateau in his recovery, he moved to a new place that would force him to progress even more, but he'd hit a plateau months ago and hadn't forced himself away. Sure, he'd gotten better at managing his panics and working through the aftermath of horrific nightmares, but he could do that anywhere. It was just like Sun said: He didn't have to be in the desert to work on internal issues like that.

             He thought on the relationships he'd built in the commune and how, apart from Sun and Yan, every one of those relationships still felt somehow superficial even after so long. Certainly he'd learned to blend in with the crowd, to laugh at the jokes and take a jab here or there for the benefit of the others. He'd learned how to engage with some kind of sense of humor, even if it wasn't on par with the sense of humor he used to have. But he didn't lie awake at night thinking about those people or their well-being. He didn't worry about them the same way that he worried about Mako, Korra, Asami, and Opal.

            And even then, now he’d talked to them both it hit Bolin why he’d been able to get along so well with Sun in the first place: She was like a weird sand bending version of Asami. They thought the same way. They were open to speaking with him in the same way. Stranger still, both of them had said virtually the exact same thing to him: Doing bad things doesn’t make someone a bad person, not if they try to fix it.

            When it came down to it, Bolin realized that there was very little keeping him there. Fear was the primary factor. He was afraid to go back, but nothing was going to alleviate that fear except for going back, and that reality rendered it a moot point. There was Shibu, but she didn't need him. She'd bonded with Sun more in the last few months than she'd ever done before, so Bolin felt confident that Sun could keep Shibu happy and that Shibu could keep Sun happy. The hunting party would get on perfectly well without him: They'd gotten along perfectly well before he'd arrived.  His absence wouldn't hurt them in the slightest.

            All signs pointed back to Republic City, and they were signs that Bolin simply couldn't ignore. There was nothing left for him to do in the commune except grow old and waste away, but there was plenty to do in Republic City. There was a brother to support and friends with whom he needed to rekindle a bond. There were people he'd betrayed and hurt, and he needed to make it up to them somehow. He needed to make amends, and the only way he was going to do that was if he could access them in person.

            It was like the decision had been made for him.

            The next morning Bolin spoke to Yan, and everything after that happened far too fast for his liking. Sun cried her eyes out when he told her that he was going, but she helped him clean out his yurt and store his things away for transport to the airship, and she barely said a word the whole time. Asami and Opal helped, too, and their talking more than made up for Sun's quiet.

            The day after that, Bolin dragged his wicker trunk to the airship and took careful inventory to make certain he'd not forgotten anything he might need. That night a dinner was held in his honor, a dinner attended by Sun and Yan and the hunting party to which none of Opal, Asami, or Korra were invited. It was his farewell dinner, and Bolin was contented by it.

            The third morning he returned his sandstone yurt to the earth, went to Sun's hut to say his farewells to Shibu, and he received one last tearful hug from Sun. He departed on the airship with the girls before noon. Too exhausted to feel sad, he made his way back to the airship's bunks, and on the way there, for the first time since he'd decided to go home, he came face to face with Korra.

            It struck him then that she hadn't been out of the airship in three or four days. She looked awful, and the look she gave him was awful, and the way that look made his stomach turn to water was awful, too.

            "Hi," Bolin said dumbly, unsure what else to say. He regretted it at once when Korra's eyes narrowed, when she went all rigid.

            "It's good to see you."

            Korra had said the words all flat and impersonal. She said the words as a formality only, not because she truly meant them. The tone of her voice said that clearly enough. Bolin couldn't feel her through the airship's metal floor panels, but he didn't need his earthbending to know she was lying. There was no way in the world that she'd ever find it good to see him.

            "I'm happy you decided to come home."

            Again, with the tone. Again, with the detachment. It was enough to make Bolin feel sick. It was enough to shoot a jolt of panic into his middle, but Bolin didn't act on it. He let it warm his stomach and spread into his chest so that when he finally said, "Don't lie," it came out with uncharacteristic evenness, and then he forced himself to walk on by.

            And Korra just stared.


	55. The First Confrontation

          Korra did everything she could to act normal in the wake of Bolin's return. She tried to carry on conversations with Asami over dinner and tried to remain as sociable as she could with Opal, but there was no denying how difficult it had become to ignore Bolin's presence and the shift it caused in everyone around. He seemed to appear from nowhere when Korra least expected it so that she could barely come out of the bunks without wondering when or where he'd pop up next.

          Bolin had assumed a ghostly quality, a weird softness that made him seem somehow ethereal. When he moved about the airship he did so with quiet strides and as graceful a gait as Korra had ever seen out of a boy, particularly one as clumsy as Bolin had once been. His mannerisms and the tone of his voice (on the rare occasion he spoke) seemed softer, too. He seemed more contemplative. He carried himself more confidently, with a straighter posture, and yet his eyes remained almost always on the floor.

          When the four of them ate, Korra kept a surreptitious eye on Bolin, watching and waiting for the moment he might screw up and let the collected mask come off, but the moment never came. For lunch and dinner, Bolin emerged as wordlessly as he always did. He ate slowly. He didn't put his elbows on the table. He didn't belch. He left a solid portion of his food untouched, including every last scrap of meat he was served. And then he dismissed himself with remarkable politeness back to the bunks and left before anyone could invite him to stay. On the single occasion that Asami had managed to stammer out a request for his continued company, he responded with a very quiet, "No, thank you," and left all the same.

          Bolin's aura spread all over the airship, like a pocket of unreality surrounded him and engulfed anyone who happened to stray too close. In his presence, Opal and Asami both changed, and Korra had to admit that when she was near him, she changed, too. Over the last months, whenever Bolin had been mentioned Korra assumed a jumpiness and stammering stupidity that she couldn't seem to overcome, a stammering stupidity compounded by the deep-rooted anger in her heart. When Bolin showed his face now, it all seemed to smooth out. She didn't feel jumpy. She didn't even feel all that angry. She felt conflicted and complicated and cold.

          All the jumpiness that had once come over Korra seemed to have spread to Opal, because whenever Bolin came around she lost her composure entirely and melted into a hot stuttering mess. She couldn't get a word out to him without stumbling over it, and she kept eyeing Bolin with a hungry look that made Korra feel exceptionally sick. When Bolin was gone, Opal came alive. She babbled and carried on, talking fast and constantly about how cute he was. On the single occasion that Opal used the word _exotic_ , Korra wanted to smack her upside the head.

          She didn't.

          Asami's change was the subtlest of all, because she didn't stammer and didn't get angry. She didn't gush about how far Bolin had come since the last time they'd seen him. Instead, Asami got quiet. She seemed to listen more carefully and think a little bit harder than usual about how to respond to things. Weirder still was that this quietness didn't just set in when Bolin was nearby; it set in when Korra was nearby, too. When Korra paid close enough attention, it seemed like Asami was acting the same way toward them both, but Korra couldn't imagine why.

          On the second day, Asami radioed to Zaofu to let them know that all was well, that they had found Bolin, and that they all were on the way back. Bolin, Opal, and Korra were all in attendance for the call, and though they each remained silent, Bolin was clearly uncomfortable. When the transmission ended, he voiced his disapproval with the arrangement quietly and asked if there was any way they could bypass Zaofu until he felt more ready, but Asami said no.

          They landed in Zaofu a couple short days thereafter, and the reunion was every bit as awkward as Korra believed it would be. Su met them on the landing pad and though she kept a straight face when the lot of them disembarked, Korra could tell she was elated. She hugged all of them, even Bolin who offered no response or reaction at all, informed them that there would be a fancy dinner that evening to welcome them all back home, and invited them to make themselves comfortable in their usual guest rooms until then.

          Korra imagined at the time that Su would use those few hours to stalk Bolin. Maybe she would even be straightforward and approach him head on to catch up on things, evaluate his progress, and do all of the motherly things Korra imagined a mother would do if one of her children went away for so long without any notice. Maybe she would use that time to scold him for being such an idiot prior to his departure. To Korra's dismay, however, Su instead joined her and Asami on the walk back to their small guest house, and after Asami excused herself to go freshen up, Su followed Korra instead.

          Unsure what to say, Korra entered her room, dropped onto the bed, and waited. Su didn't say anything, either, just stood by the door watching Korra scrutinizingly, and the quiet grew uncomfortably thick. "Well?" Korra uttered after a time. "Why did you follow me?"

          "I figured I would check in with you."

          "I figured you'd check in with Bolin first."

          "I haven't seen him for almost a year, Korra, a few more hours won't hurt anything. Besides, I thought you might need the chance to decompress."

          "Somehow you being here makes that a little hard."

          "Decompress wasn't the right word," Su conceded, and she folded her arms casually, then leaned against the wall, "maybe the better word was _yell_."

          "What do I have to yell about?"

          "Oh, come on, Korra. Don't insist on being so aloof all the time."

          "I'm not being aloof."

          "Okay then, you're being stubborn. I could tell from the moment you stepped off that airship how uptight you were feeling, how angry, and I want to do whatever I can to make this transition easier for you."

          "What transition?

          "Bolin is going to be a part of your life again whether you want him to be or not. Unless you plan to cut Mako out entirely, that is."

          "That's a little unfair, don't you think?"

          "No," Su said. "I don't think it's unfair at all. You and Mako have been friends for a long time, but he's Bolin's _brother_. And trust me, as much as Mako might be angry at Bolin, he loves him, too, and is going to do anything he can to help Bolin integrate with you all again. Unless you cut Mako off, there's no way you can cut Bolin off. I'm sorry."

          "You don't have to be sorry, Su," Korra said. "I've known all along that if Bolin came home I was going to have to deal with him sooner or later."

          It wasn't a lie, either. Korra had known the whole time that if Bolin ever came home, she would have to reconcile what had happened between them, hard as it may have been and no matter the outcome. She'd entertained a great many thoughts, some more horrible than others, about how she might do that, but had never really drawn a conclusion. For all her thinking on the matter, the only thing Korra could come up with was that maybe she could sabotage his return somehow. Maybe she could use her secret against Bolin, because surely if she told the others what he'd done they would hate him as much as she did, and maybe then they wouldn't allow him back into their lives.

          Of course, circumstances hadn't allowed that to happen. Her own cowardice over mentioning the ordeal prevented it from happening. She hadn't even told Asami, and if she couldn't tell someone as close to her as Asami, how in the world could she ever hope to tell Tenzin or Opal or anyone else?

          Korra sighed.

          "How was the reunion?" Su asked, a little tentative now. "How'd you take it?"

          "I didn't break down, if that's what you're asking. I felt angry. I still feel angry."

          "And you have every right to be angry." Su looked at the floor then, her brow furrowed as if in troubled thought, and when she looked up at Korra again the concern became obvious. "Can I offer you some unsolicited old lady advice?"

          "You're going to even if I say no."

          Su nodded. "You're right. I would."

          "Well?"

          With a deep breath, Su looked back at her feet and spoke slowly. "I can't imagine how you've felt over the last few months, Korra. I can guess, but I'll never know. Still, I've seen what it's done to you and, if I can say so, I don't like it. You're entitled to your anger for what happened but please, please don't hang on to that anger any longer than you have to. You don't ever have to forgive Bolin, and I'm sure if you want to avoid him you'll be able to, but please try to find some way to accept what happened so that you can move on with your life. You shouldn't sacrifice your happiness just because Bolin is nearby."

          Korra looked at her hands. She fidgeted. In a roundabout kind of way, that had been the kindest thing that Su had ever said to her. There was an enormous part of Korra that hated Su for suggesting she might ever be able to let her anger go, but there was a part of her that knew Su was right. She understood the truth because she'd seen the truth in action years ago, the very first time she'd come to Zaofu and watched Su and Lin fight about grudges that they'd held for decades. That kind of resentment made people sick. It made people miserable. It took the worth out of life. Lin had been that way once, and for as much respect as Korra held for her, Korra didn't want to follow in Lin's footsteps.

          She looked up to say something to Su that might indicate her understanding, but Su was gone.

         

*****

         

          Solid ground had never felt so strange, yet for the first time in months, Bolin was standing on it and its foreignness startled him more than anything he could ever remember. It was familiar, yes, but subtle and sensitive and _alive_. The influx of feeling it imparted overwhelmed him the moment his foot touched the landing pad, boot or no. It stunned him more than seeing the Future industries Airship in the middle of the desert had done, more than finding Su waiting to embrace him with open arms when he set foot into Zaofu.

          He didn't understand until after he'd gotten back to the room he'd once occupied, the same room where he'd broken down and attacked Su's healing staff and experienced terrible, terrible things. He'd dragged his trunk from the airship and dropped it in the middle of the floor so that he could dig through it more thoroughly and find something that suited him to wear to dinner, but he didn't find anything but sand in the folds of the clothes that didn't fit him anymore, which trickled down onto his feet and reminded him that he'd spent the last half a year training his seismic sense on earth that had been so infirm that at first he couldn't bend it at all. He'd worked tirelessly to understand the sand and recognize the vibrations being sent through it, so tirelessly that he often wondered in the moment if it was worth it, if there was something wrong with him, but now he understood: The problem had never been him. The problem had been the ground.

          The difference between the sand and stone was astounding. It was incredible. It was as though he'd been living in the dark his whole life, like he'd learned to walk and function in a pitch black world, and now someone had turned on the lights. Someone had turned on the _sun_. He could feel things with such intense clarity that for moments after he'd stepped onto the concrete he couldn't do anything but stand there, feeling it all and trying to sort it out. There had been Su, and she'd been excited and nervous and relieved. Opal had been happy, giddy, and full of a beautiful anticipation. Asami had been happy, too, but her happiness had been dampened by hesitation. And then there had been Korra, a jumble of negative emotions so wound up and tightly knotted that Bolin couldn't hope to untangle them at all.

          He felt himself for the first time, too, and that was a new experience beyond the rest. For all the times he'd imagined what it would feel like to recognize himself through the earth, his imagination had never come close to reality. He was still and quiet. He was even. The feeling reminded him uncannily of Yan and of Sun, of the way that they always felt calm as still water even if they didn't appear that way from the outside. It reminded him of Su, too, because even though she kept a range of emotion the same as everyone else, her fluctuations were almost always well-controlled and often subtle.

          The similarity ended there, though, because as much as he recognized likenesses in the vibrations of the earth, he felt uniquely himself in the obvious way that separated everyone else from everyone else. It was striking. He couldn't understand how he'd been unable to notice it before.

          The dinner hour arrived sooner than Bolin felt it should. He'd fully expected some visitor to join him in his room at some point in the afternoon, Su or Opal, but nobody showed up until dusk, when Asami knocked gently on his door and offered to walk with him to the dining room. He'd known it was her before he even answered the door. He'd felt her coming.

          Dinner was strained, though Bolin didn't know if it was because of him or in spite of him. He didn't even know if it was really strained or if it was just his imagination, if it was his reading too far into the signals sent by the earth. The Beifongs talked amongst themselves the same way as they did during most meals, cueing Korra or Asami to jump in with directed questions and prompts. Everyone played their part well enough, acting as Bolin might've expected them to act once upon a time before the world had gone crazy. Still, the show did no good. Perhaps they were fooling each other, but Bolin knew better. The earth told him better.

          No one asked him any questions or gave him any prompts. From what he could tell, no one so much as looked like they wanted to invite him into the conversation. Occasionally he'd catch Opal or one of the twins glancing at him sidelong, but the second he caught their eye they'd avert their gaze almost too suddenly so that their curiosity became more than obvious and extremely uncomfortable.

          Inevitably, the meal concluded and place settings were cleared away, and while a series of kitchen workers brought out desserts and teas typical of a formal Zaofu dinner, Bolin stood to excuse himself. He didn't much feel like eating dessert and didn't want to insult anyone by leaving it once it had been served. He'd already left enough of his dinner uneaten. Zaofu wasn't so far from water that getting fresh fish was out of the question, but Bolin couldn't remember a single time it had been served in all his visits to the city. Now was no exception. Considering the availability of cow pigs and pickens and buffalo yaks and all kinds of other terrestrial livestock, he couldn't be surprised that Su had served it.

          A little hungry but more exhausted, Bolin wasted no time in settling down for sleep. He pulled off his shirt and stepped into his pajamas, reclined on the bed, and stared at the ceiling. He missed the open-air roof of his sandstone yurt, watching the clouds drift and a million stars sparkle and tracking the moon as it crept along on nights he couldn't drift off. Being inside a building like this made Bolin feel confined and claustrophobic. He'd noticed it on the airship and had hoped that maybe being in a city would be better, but it wasn't. All he wanted was fresh air and open sky, the ability to walk outside and see to the horizon in any direction without the need to step around buildings and other ugly man-made structures. He'd spent the last half a year under in the fresh air where he had all the room in the world to run and breathe and work to his heart's content. Zaofu made him feel small. The buildings made him feel cramped. And the domes, if they were there, would block out the night even if he went outside. If they were there, they would close him off from the world more than the building alone. But he hadn't looked to see if they'd been reconstructed. It hadn't been on his mind.

          A short time later the bedroom door opened and Bolin sat up to see Su standing in the doorway, arms crossed with a contemplative look on her face, and while he'd thought that seeing her alone might bring on the panic, it didn't. In a way, seeing her there all impassive was relieving. She bore no evidence of judgment or negativity on her face or in her posture, there was no indication anywhere that she harbored any grudge against him at all. She was just Su, all full of motherly intent, and she had finally come to greet him.

          "Go for a walk?" she asked gently.

          Obediently, Bolin pushed himself up and retrieved his shirt from the floor beside his bed. As he pulled it on he paid careful attention to Su's expression, to the gradual shift from feigned detachment to genuine interest as she laid eyes on him to curiosity when her gaze came to rest on the honor marks on his ribs. The line Sun had etched there was on the north side of healing, to the point now where it had scabbed over and its dull sunburn-like ache had given over to itching, but it was obvious what they were when he didn't have on his shirt.

          He ignored the look on her face.

          "No shoes?"

          Bolin shrugged.

          He didn't ask to where Su was leading him, instead choosing to follow in silence, and Su didn't offer any explanation or destination either. Had it not been for the expectant, slightly restless quality in her feeling, Bolin might've thought she was taking him about aimlessly, like the outing was more for air than anything else, but that uneasy feeling told him elsewise. Su had come with a purpose, and Bolin supposed it was only a matter of time before one of them would have to speak in order to break the tense silence and get started on what he assumed would be a difficult conversation.

          "Did you find it?" Su asked after a time.

          Bolin looked at her, confused, and Su nodded her understanding at him as she walked.

          "I always imagined you left here to go out looking for something. Did you find whatever it was you were looking for?"

          Su wasn't wrong. Yes, he'd gone out looking for something, for control or sanity or wholeness, and to a point he'd found those things with Hokki and with the sand benders. But there remained a deep and seemingly insatiable emptiness in him, something missing from his life that he couldn't put his finger on no matter how hard he tried. Bolin knew what that meant.

          "No," he admitted quietly.

          Su nodded again, and the silence resumed.

          In short order, Bolin recognized the path upon which they were walking, the path that he'd walked almost every day he'd called Zaofu his home. They were walking to his quiet place, the peaceful grove of trees so far removed from the city where he'd trained and broken down and come to sit when he needed to think, the place he'd left in ruins before he ran away.

          The grove had changed in his absence. A tree was missing, he knew, because he'd uprooted it in a fit of anger after Opal and everyone else admitted that they'd lied to him about Mako's death. Its desiccated trunk had been cleared away so that only a scar in the earth remained where it had once stood. The tree into which he'd thrown his first obsidian shards still stood strong and bore the slightest shadows on its trunk where the stone had connected and burned its flesh. There were still rocks that he remembered pulling from the ground not in blind rage but in carefully controlled training, a round plot of cooled rock which had once served as his practice pool where he'd worked so hard to learn how to manipulate the lava like a waterbender, though a patch of grass had begun growing out atop it. Nature had begun reclaiming this place, and Bolin didn't truly mind. This place had needed healing just as much as he had.

          "I owe you an apology," Bolin said after a time, when Su had begun to settle on a rock she drew from the earth. He stood near the edge of the clearing, looking out into the dark and back toward the city lights, deliberately faced away from her so that she might not see the embarrassment on his face.

          "Is that what you're going to do, then?" Su asked. There was a gentle teasing quality in her voice, but it was all good-natured. It sounded and felt that way at any rate. "You're going to go around apologizing to everyone?"

          "No," Bolin replied. He leaned against one of the trees and cast his eyes on the ground. "But I think it's the right thing to do for now, between you and me. I'm sorry that I made you worry, and I'm sorry for making such a mess of things before I left. There's more to be sorry for, too, but that's where I'm going to start."

          Su didn't say anything to indicate that she accepted his apology, but Bolin hadn't expected that she would. He did feel her shift around on her seat, however, though he didn't know exactly what that meant. With as masterful as Su was at keeping her emotions in check, the things Bolin felt in her sometimes meant little at all.

          "What else do you think you've got to be sorry for?"

          "Everything I did before I left, of course. I treated you so badly. And then when I was gone, I took for granted the clothes you gave me and sold them because I didn't want to be associated with Zaofu anymore. I pawned off one of the metal bands for a bag of rice and a shower."

          "One of them?"

          "I still have the other one."

          A faint smile spread on Su's face, and the tiniest glimmer came to her eyes. She held Bolin's eye contact for a few seconds, then looked to the ground, and she spoke straightforwardly. "I forgive you. Don't think anything else of it. If you're healthy again, then I can settle for putting the past in the past."

          Bolin nodded his appreciation. "I wish everyone else would accept my apology so easily," he said, downcast. 

          "The only person I can think of who wouldn't accept an apology from you is Korra, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't try."

          Bolin should've known that Su knew. She knew everything, and Korra had always had a penchant for discussing personal matters with all the wrong people. But the fact that Su had accepted his apology so readily, even knowing what she knew, heartened him a bit. It was a feeling similar to that which Asami had given him when he'd confided the same information in her. It was a feeling that suggested there might be more hope here than he thought.

          He sighed the emotion away. "You know," he said, as much a question as it was a statement of resignation.

          "Yes," Su said, "I know. And Mako knows, too. Mako is the one who found out about it first, and he came to me to ask for help because he didn't know how to handle it and Korra was a basket case. Outside of the two of us, though, there's no one else."

          "Asami knows," Bolin said curtly. "I told Asami before I came home."

          Su nodded. "How'd she take it?"

          "She was mad but she got over it pretty fast. I guess my coming home was important enough for her to put that feeling aside."

          "That's Asami for you."      

          Bolin knew. She'd been most of what convinced him to come home. Had she not kept such a cool head about the whole ordeal he'd almost certainly still be with the sand benders. It was her acceptance and her willingness to try to understand that had brought him back, because if one person could try to work with him then maybe others would try, too. At least, that had been Bolin's hope and so far, it had proven true. The only person who'd seemed unwilling to speak with him was Korra, and even she had tried a little bit. It had been stilted, angry formalities, but it was something.

          The warm, hopeful feeling spread in Bolin's stomach again, but he willed it away. There was no sense being overly optimistic now. If he set his expectations low, he wouldn't be disappointed when things didn't work out as he planned.

          "Asami told me that she wants to be off to Republic City tomorrow afternoon," Su went on in a much welcome change of subject. "Mako will be over the moon to have you home."

          "Will he?"

          "Why are you so skeptical about everything?"

          "I just know how I left things. If I was in anyone else's position and they had done to me the things I did to them, I wouldn't be so quick to welcome them home."

          Su fell quiet and grew tense. Bolin felt the change in the earth, and he wondered if it had been because of the cynical tone in his voice. Cynicism or not, it had been the truth. In the time he'd been away he'd learned a lot about people, enough to know that if someone was deranged enough to manipulate, wound, and threaten the people they loved, that person should be cut off. That was how he viewed it, anyway.

          Bolin recognized the conflict growing inside of him as the same conflict he'd entertained since the morning he'd marched out of Zaofu. Part of him had never wanted to return because no matter what he did or how much effort he put into his healing, he would never be the Bolin that all his friends had come to care about over the years, so there was no use trying to find him again. The other part of him, the admittedly smaller part, had clung to a scrap of hope that suggested it was possible to heal enough to return home and make amends. He'd always known it to be a recklessly optimistic thought, but he'd given in to it all the same. Now he was here, he just had to figure out what to do next. He had to figure out which part of him had been correct.

          Su cleared her throat and dropped her chin onto her hand casually once Bolin's attention returned. "Either way, you're going to go back to the city, right? I can't imagine you want to stay here."

          "I hope that's okay."

          "Of course it is."

          The clearing went quiet again, and Bolin hated it. After so long away he felt guilty that he didn't have more to discuss. Still, he didn't feel like his story was worthy enough to be told without an explicit invitation. No one wanted to hear about his crises.

          "I know I don't have any room to ask you for a favor," Bolin said after a bit, "but I'm worried about going home. I'm worried that I'm going to be overwhelmed when I get back."

          "How can I help?"

          "What's been going on there? In Republic City? What has everyone been doing while I've been away? Where does everything stand with the whole firebending thing?"

          Su's tenseness went away, and she reclined comfortably on her slab of stone, leaning heavily on her hands. "That's a big question," she said thoughtfully. "I don't know where to start. I guess I'll keep it simple. Mako has been working on the investigation since he got home. He and Lin had so much information piled up from all of your work that it's been his full time job. He's been promoted I think twice now because of all the progress he's been able to make, and he's been acting as an envoy between Raiko, the Firelord, and the Republic City Police. He's gotten a little important, I guess. Asami and Korra have been helping him when they can. Nothing has really changed with Tenzin or any of his family except that they've been involved in peacekeeping efforts between firebending citizens and everyone else."

          "Is it really that bad?" Bolin asked. "Bad enough that they need peacekeepers?"

          Su contemplated this for a moment before answering. "I don't think I'd call it bad, just different. See, with all the information Mako sorted out, Raiko mobilized the United Forces to track down and raid the Society's hideouts in the Earth Nation and the Fire Nation. And Lin pulled back a chunk of her force on Izumi's orders, because having so many police on the streets was making people uneasy in the city. Tenzin and the kids have been able to mediate when disputes come up."

          "What does all that mean?" Bolin asked.

          "For you? I'm not sure it means anything. As far as I know you're not involved and you won't be. No one planned for you to be around when they were working through any of this, so I don't think you'd be involved now."

          "I'm not involved? With what?"

          "Well, since the United Forces have been raiding larger camps the number of attacks on cities has dropped and it's had a ripple effect. Fewer attacks means more police available to use on the investigation. More manpower means more headway, and since they're making headway, Mako, Korra, and Asami are free to go check out leads on smaller encampments like the quarantines in order to get people out who are less of a threat. Raiko and Izumi asked them to go check a few places out because they can move more covertly than a regiment of United Forces soldiers. They leave less of a footprint and can get places that the United Forces can't."

          Bolin understood the basics. Korra, Mako, and Asami would be acting the same as he and Mako had when they were kids, poking their noses into places they didn't necessarily belong because it was harder to notice them. The rest of the explanation hadn't made a lot of sense. He didn't know what Su meant by _quarantines_ and he didn't know what Su meant by _United Forces raiding_. He didn't know what Su meant by a lot of things, but Bolin understood the implication.

          "So, they put everything on hold to come find me," Bolin said in a tone of suggestion, and Su nodded. "And when we get back they're going to pick back up where they left off." Su nodded again. "And I'm assuming they're just going to leave me... Alone?"

          "I'd have to guess so," Su said gently. "Like I said, they didn't really plan for you."

          "No, I guess they wouldn't. What about Opal?"

          "She never intended to go with them. She's been firmly planted in Zaofu since you all returned from..."

          "From Baihe Island," Bolin prompted. "You can say it."

          "She just went along with Korra and Asami to find you because she was invited."

          Bolin heaved a sigh of resignation. Here he'd given up a life he'd enjoyed in a place where he'd finally found a modicum of happiness, only to return home and be all but abandoned. Here he'd come back to face the people he'd left behind, and they were going to leave him behind. It upset him a little, but all the same, he felt like he deserved it. He didn't want it, but he had it coming.

          "I've got to go," Bolin said. He needed to talk to the others. He needed to ask some difficult questions and he didn't want to wait. He needed to understand what his role was going to be once he got back to Republic City and if Team Avatar had a place for him, or if he would just be a bystander watching while the good guys saved the day. He needed to know if he should just give up and head back to the commune.

          When Bolin turned away, Su didn't follow. She continued sitting there, presumably to watch him go, to wonder why he'd cut their conversation off so suddenly.

          "Can you answer one personal question for me?" Su asked, and Bolin stopped mid-step. He turned back and looked, puzzled, but he nodded and Su shifted. Bolin didn't miss her eyes darting to his middle. "Are those real?" She pointed. "Those marks? Are they real?"

          "Yeah," Bolin said, "they're real."

          It looked like Su was going to ask another question, like Bolin's very straightforward, very short answer hadn't satisfied her. But Bolin turned away before she could utter another word, and then he was gone.

 

*****

 

          After Bolin left the dinner table, the whole place seemed to lighten. The moment the door closed, the twins burst out in excited conversation and Opal turned to Su and started babbling so quickly as to be almost wholly incomprehensible. From the snippets Korra could hear, it seemed she was talking about going to speak to Bolin and whether she should think about rekindling their old relationship, if Bolin was stable enough and trustworthy enough. Unflappable, Su didn't so much as glance at Korra when the topic came up.

          It was like Su served as the glue holding the company together, because once Opal had exhausted her line of conversation and Su had finished her after-dinner tea, she excused herself for the evening and everyone else began leaving in turn. When Korra stood, Asami rose beside her, and in a not wholly pleasant voice, Asami said, "Can you come to my room for a bit? I have something I want to talk about."

          Korra followed her, tension building in her stomach with every step until Asami opened her guest room door and beckoned Korra inside toward the bed. For a fleeting moment Korra wondered if Asami had invited her back to the guest room under false pretense, perhaps because she was trying to be covert, because Korra couldn't imagine any reason why Asami would've extended the invitation beyond intimacy. But then Korra realized that such a roundabout initiation wasn't Asami's style; she'd always been straightforward and communicative when it came to bedroom activities, and she had to have understood that Korra just wasn't in the mood.

          When she'd settled in at the foot of the bed and Asami had settled across from her, Korra drew a breath and asked as casually as she could, "What's up?"

          "I wanted to talk to you about Bolin."

          Korra's stomach cramped. Her mind went straight for the worst and it lingered there for a few terrible seconds that she spent working to talk herself down. The only person in the city who knew what had happened was Su, and Asami hadn't been alone with Su since they'd arrived earlier that day. Asami had _never_ been alone with Su that Korra knew of. So what would she want to talk about?

          Maybe Asami had recognized the weird change in Bolin the same way that Korra had and wanted to bounce ideas off of her. Maybe she wanted to discuss what would happen next and what Korra's thoughts were about Bolin accompanying them on their business once they returned to Republic City.

          "Why didn't you tell me?"

          Korra perked up and drew her eyes from the comforter. Asami had taken to eyeing her dangerously.

          "What?"

          "Why didn't you tell me what happened between the two of you?"

          Korra couldn't even stammer. She couldn't believe her ears. Had Asami just said what Korra thought she'd said? She had to have said it, because nothing could put Korra's stomach in ropes the same way as the thought of anyone finding out what she had done.

          "Bolin told me," Asami explained, her tone a bit gentler now, the deadly look in her eyes softened. "Bolin told me everything. He told me what happened when I went to talk with him the day after his ceremony. He was very forthcoming."

          Korra wanted to say something but she could barely catch her breath. Her chest felt heavy. Of course he'd told her. He would tell her. He _would_ be the one to ruin what relationship she'd been able to rebuild in his absence.

          Korra regretted that she'd ever let Asami go off to talk with Bolin on her own, but at the time she'd been too bullheaded and angry to realize the risk. She'd known that some day she might have to have this conversation but she hadn't expected it to happen so suddenly. She'd wanted to do it on her own terms in a comfortable place when she wouldn't have to be stuck in a cramped airship with everyone involved for the next several days. Korra couldn't imagine how uncomfortable the flight back to Republic City was going to be now. She and Bolin couldn't both lock themselves in the bunks, but Korra wasn't sure that she could stand facing Asami's wrath, either.

          "So, why didn't you tell me?"

          There was nothing to say. Korra didn't know how to respond even if she could catch her breath. She didn't know what Asami was aiming for, what her angle was, how she really felt, what she wanted to hear. Asami's face had turned a blank slate. Was she really angry or had Korra misread her initial tone?

          "I wish you would have, but that's easy for me to say, isn't it? It would've explained so much for me. It would've helped me understand."

          "Are... You mad?"

          They were the hardest three words Korra had ever uttered because they were the only three words she could think of that had the power to unravel every good thing she and Asami had established. If Asami felt betrayed, if she felt mistrusted, if she felt alienated, everything could be gone.

          "No," Asami said, but then she paused and shook her head and said, "yes. I'm angry, at least a little bit. I'm angry because you let yourself suffer because of what happened, and if you had told me I could've helped you through it. I'm angry because you never gave me the chance to be the support you needed, and our relationship suffered right along with you."

          Korra could have grunted an, "Oh," that would've been all the response she could muster. The breath caught in her throat.

          "I'm mad at Bolin, don't misunderstand me. I'm furious with him. But I'm mad at you, too. When you and I got back together we promised each other that we wouldn't keep any more secrets. We promised that we'd tell each other everything, if not to be honest then to make sure the other had every chance to help when there was a problem. You made that promise to me after you and Bolin... You should have told me. I could have been there for you."

          Korra nodded. Asami was right, but then, she usually was.

          "I don't know what's going to happen once we get back to Republic City," Asami continued, contemplative now, "but I am sure of a couple things. First, I know that I'm willing to forgive both of you. I'm willing to forgive Bolin for all the stupid things he did because he was completely out of his mind at the time and he's clearly sorry about it now, at least from what I've seen of him, and I'm willing to forgive you for not trusting me enough to confide in me because you were obviously and understandably hurt. Second, I know that you and Bolin are going to have to talk to each other. I don't know if you'll ever be friends again and I don't know if you'll ever be civil with each other again, but I do know that you're going to have to talk. As awful as he was to all of us, I love Bolin and so does Mako. We're both going to be making an effort to reconnect with him, so you're going to have to see Bolin some time."

          Korra still couldn't speak. She didn't know if she could be civil with Bolin, either. In fact, if Asami asked her to make call on the matter, Korra would've been certain that civility was off the menu entirely.

          "Was it at least consensual?"

          Korra nodded. As much as she hated Bolin, she couldn't accuse him of _that_. As much as she believed his intentions to have been cruel, she hadn't told him to stop even when given the opportunity.

          "Do you want to tell me your side of it? I've heard Bolin's side, so it seems only fair that I give you the chance to explain yours."

          "No," Korra said with little contemplation. "I'm not--"

          Someone knocked on the door, and Korra's throat clamped shut at the same time Asami's brow furrowed. She recoiled in disbelief and confusion, and after uttering a quiet, "I still love you, you know," to Korra, Asami stood and made her way to the door.

          As always, Korra should have known it was going to happen, and she should've expected it at the worst possible moment. The moment she heard Asami's surprised gasp Korra knew, and Asami verified the truth when she opened the door and Bolin was standing there in the hall. He'd appeared again as if from nowhere. 

          "Sit down," Asami said tersely, "we can talk."

          Bolin glanced at Korra for a fleeting second before he entered the room, and in that fleeting second Korra recognized the look of unfettered fear that came over him. In that tiny moment his eyes went very wide and his body stiffened so that his discomfort couldn't be overlooked, and if Korra looked at him very, very closely she thought she could see the color draining from his face. But then the moment was gone, and Bolin cast his eyes submissively downward, walked in, and sat in the middle of the floor. He remained a respectful distance away, and came to rest with his fists on his knees. He bowed his head while Asami reclaimed her seat on the bed, and once Asami had settled, he spoke quietly and evenly.

          "Can you tell me what I'm going home to, exactly?"

          "What do you mean?" Asami asked, the confusion evident in her voice.

          "I just got done talking with Su, and she said that you all have been working... On the firebender thing."

          "We have been."

          "She said that you were all going to be leaving or planning to leave or something as soon as we got back to Republic City. She said you were going to investigate," Bolin's voice grew quiet toward the end, and Korra thought he sounded ashamed. It was good, she thought, because he should be ashamed. He should be groveling.

          "We won't be going anywhere for a while, no matter what," Asami explained, a clear but slightly irritated tone to her voice. Korra wondered if all of this was too much, even for Asami. "But we had just started discussing the idea with Lin and Raiko before we got the lead on you. There's still a lot of planning to be done."

          Korra saw Bolin blink hard, squint his eyes as though a shot of pain had gone through him. He clasped his hands together and rubbed his thumb against his forefinger nervously, bowed his head deeper still. It was the same as it had been on the airship: Bolin was different and maybe more complicated now than he'd been before he'd left, because Bolin was confident in one way but timid in another, was bold in one way but doubtful in another. He was polar opposites crammed into one body.

          Korra wondered if this was what he'd turned into. It made sense in a sick kind of way. Between the collapse and his running away he'd been gentle and cruel, quiet and loud, thoughtful and violent. He'd swung between extremes so often that it seemed only natural that he would settle some place in the middle, still off balance but perhaps less precariously perched. Both sides of psychopathic Bolin seemed to remain firmly entrenched inside of him, even if the swings between sides weren't so severe.

          Bolin had become a walking, talking contradiction. He'd become perhaps even more paradoxical than he'd been before, and the need to unravel the puzzle that he'd become was what had drawn Korra in to begin with.

          She wouldn't let it happen again. She'd die before she let it happen again.

          "I know it's early still," Bolin said, a distinct sheepishness to him, "and I know that asking any of you to commit to anything with me right now wouldn't be fair and it wouldn't be right, but I still have to ask you: Is there any room for me anywhere in any of this? Or am I going to go home and be alone again?"

          Asami looked at Korra, her brow all furrowed in concern, and Korra looked back stone faced. If he'd asked Korra the question, she knew what the answer would be: No. If Korra was the judge, there was no room anywhere in the whole of Republic City for Bolin, let alone on their missions into Democratic Society territory, because being anywhere remotely near him was too much for her to bear. For a second, she couldn't imagine what a fiasco it would be to have him along for such a sensitive operation as those they had been planning, but then she remembered Fire Fountain City and knew exactly what kind of fiasco it was likely to be. Yet Bolin hadn't asked Korra. He'd asked Asami, and it seemed like Asami couldn't decide on a response.

          "I don't know," Asami said, a regretful but decisive edge in her tone. "I can tell you that we'll need to talk about it, Mako, Korra, and I, and we'll have to make a decision. I don't know what that decision is going to be."

          Korra knew what the decision would be if she had any say in the matter.

          "For what it's worth," Bolin uttered in the still sheepish, pitiful voice, "I want to try if you'll let me. I know I made a mess of things the last time we all..." He stopped, like he choked on the words, then he shook his head and got effortfully to his feet as if to leave. "I'm sorry I interrupted you two."

          "Wait a minute," Asami said hotly, and the statement had come on so suddenly that it drew both Bolin and Korra's stunned attention. "Korra and I just talking about you. Maybe it's good that I've got both of you in the same room for once."

          Without thinking, Korra looked at Bolin as if searching for some kind of answer only to find him looking back at her with the same lost, mildly frightened expression. Then she turned back to Asami but stayed silent.

          "All three of us know the big scary secret," Asami went on, "so that's in the open, and I want to say my peace to both of you about it. I think you owe me that courtesy at the very least."

          Korra felt afraid.

          "Maybe it's not fair for me to say this right now, right here, in this situation, but I might never get another chance. You're both at fault in this mess. You're both equally at fault. Korra, I know you're putting all the blame on Bolin, and Bo, you're putting all the blame on yourself, but that's not the truth of it. You both should have known better. Bo, you should've stayed in your room and dealt with the fallout from Baihe Island and trusted all of us enough to let us help you. Maybe you were out of your mind, but I _know_ there was enough of you left in that wreck to understand you needed help. I saw that. And Korra, you _weren't_ out of your mind. You knew he wasn't in any position to be making those kinds of decisions _at all_ but you still went along with it. And now you're blaming him for the whole thing like he came at you and tied you down. I'm ashamed of both of you. I'm mad at both of you and there's part of me that hates both of you so much that I can't even explain it. But I love both of you more than that, and I can't bear the idea of watching two people I care about so much ripping each other apart. So, you guys need to figure out your drama, deal with it, and move on with your lives so that we can be Team Avatar again."

          The room went quiet. Korra found herself gaping, her mouth open ever slightly in disbelief, and when she looked at Bolin he'd assumed the same look, too. Then in the quiet Asami stood up and looked between them both with narrowed eyes.

          "I'll leave you two to talk," she said, and her stride toward the door was so purposeful that Bolin stepped aside automatically, and he watched her the whole way out.

          Even though she'd expected the interaction to be strained from the moment Bolin entered the room, this was in no way how Korra imagined things would end up, with Asami gone and the shroud which separated her from Bolin in tatters. But here they were now, face to face with an air of awkwardness between them, because Korra didn't know what to say and it seemed Bolin was no better off.

          "What are you staring at?" Korra demanded. "Can't you see you've done enough here?"

          Bolin opened his mouth as if to speak, but then he closed it again and bowed his head instead. He stood there in the quiet, and the longer he stood the more he deflated until at last he looked utterly defeated. "I know you hate me," he said gently, "and you're entitled to that. I won't ask you to let me try to make it up to you because I don't deserve the chance. I just want you to know that I get it. I know my place here, and I won't overstep."

          "You told her," Korra growled. "You told Asami about what happened and look how it's ended up."

          "I won't overstep again."

          Again, Bolin fell quiet as if in thought, but then he moved. He straightened his posture but kept his eyes notably down, then he brought his hands forward in a gesture of utmost formality, bowed quickly but respectfully, and left the room.

          Korra was alone and she felt alone. Asami was gone to who knew where and Bolin had gone and there was no one to whom Korra could turn for help except for Su, and no amount of feeling bad would ever make Korra go to her. Thus Korra stood and left Asami's room, walked the three feet to her own, and resigned herself to spending more time by herself. Maybe Asami wanted Team Avatar to be whole again, but Korra just couldn't see how it could happen.


	56. Not the Same

            Bolin felt as sick and regretful as he'd felt about anything in his life. He hadn't known Korra was in Asami's room. He hadn't felt her. With every intent of sorting out the important questions, he'd gone to Asami's room to make certain that coming home had truly been the best choice for him, but the second Asami opened the door to reveal Korra sitting sullen on the end of the bed, Bolin knew that things weren't going to be so simple.

            He didn't bother trying to sleep. He didn't bother going back to his room. Even if he could convince himself that leaving the commune was for the best, he knew that coming to Zaofu had been a mistake, and now he knew that trying to sleep in his guest room would do no good. Every time he let his mind go quiet he heard Asami's admonishments and Korra's angry accusation, and it all made him cringe at himself. Korra had snarled at him like a beast, rubbed his nose in his failures. Of course he knew he'd done enough. Of course he knew he'd screwed up. It had been all he could think about for _months_.

            Bolin passed the night in his quiet place, seated on the rock upon which Su had sat earlier, working to keep his head clear and keep warding off the horrible feelings that had welled up inside of him. Without ever trying, it seemed he'd ruined everything all over again. Certainly, Korra and Asami's relationship had been on the up and up until he came back into the picture. At least, that was the impression he got. Maybe if he stayed away and stayed detached he could mitigate the damage.

            But wouldn't that defeat the point?

            He'd come home to reestablish those relationships and try to mend the ties he'd broken. Maybe he'd be able to do it with Asami and maybe he'd be able to do it with Su, but there was no way he'd ever be able to do it with Korra because she wouldn't let him. Rightfully so. And then there was the Opal problem, because the way she'd been eyeing him left no question as to her intent, but Bolin knew that he'd have to come clean with her eventually. If she'd spent his absence working to overcome her negative feelings only to have him crush her again... He couldn't even conceive of it.

            When the eastern sky warmed with the light of morning Bolin roused himself and set off toward his guest room to gather his things back into the wicker chest and settle back on the airship. He hadn't asked what time Asami meant to leave, and he didn't want to cause any delays. He didn't want to make an already tense situation any worse by being late.

            Bolin opened the door to his guest room and stopped dead on the spot. Opal was sitting on the bed looking distinctly sleepy, her knees pulled to her chest, back against the wall. The moment he first laid eyes on her, she seemed in some way deflated, but in the next moment she looked toward him and her face broke into an enormous smile that lingered just long enough to make his stomach feel warm with nostalgia, but then it faded away. She looked concerned. No, it went deeper than that. She looked genuinely troubled.

            "Are you okay?" she asked.

            It wasn't until this point that Bolin realized he was still standing stupidly in the doorway, his hand on the knob. He wondered what the look on his face had been, if it had been part of what made Opal look so worried. He stepped into the room and closed the door behind him, but rather than taking a seat on the bed as he might once have done--as he'd intended to do when he got back--he leaned casually against the desk on the wall opposite.

            "I'm fine," he said.

            "You were out," Opal said, then she paused and looked down as though ashamed.

            Bolin understood at once. "You stayed in here waiting for me, didn't you? You stayed in here all night?"

            She nodded.

            "Did you at least sleep?"

            Opal ignored the question. It didn't look as though she had. "I wanted to talk to you. I mean, we've been near each other for a few days but it doesn't seem like we've said two words to each other."

            "We really haven't," Bolin agreed, and the awkward quiet fell again.

            "So, where--"

            "I sat outside. I was in the grove."

            "Didn't you get cold?"

            Bolin shook his head. He hadn't noticed it. Spending so many nights in the winter desert had desensitized him to that sort of thing. Of course, spending a night outside in the summer air, even so far removed from the desert, wouldn't faze him in the slightest.

            "You're so quiet now. Why is that?"

            "I just don't have a lot that needs to be said," Bolin replied honestly. When he looked back at Opal, she'd deflated even more. Somehow the truth had hurt her. "You know, I learned something while I was gone," he began again, hoping to lessen the blow a bit. "I learned that sometimes it's better to keep my mouth shut, listen to what's going on, and think about it before I say something."

            "That seems pretty wise," Opal said softly. Bolin's statement hadn't had the expected effect. It made him flounder. Funny how he'd spent all night thinking about how this might go only to realize now that he'd never imagined what might actually be said. He'd only imagined how it would feel. "Look," Opal said all at once, and it drew Bolin's attention from his feet, "I'm just going to lay this out as plain as I can, get it out in the open, you know?" She looked up at him, and when he nodded she continued a bit more tentatively. "I want you to stay in Zaofu with me."

            Bolin stayed quiet, his face an unmoving mask of neutrality. He didn't want her to misread his thinking. He didn't even know what he was thinking.

            Opal's eyes dropped to the bedspread. "There's no nice way for me to say it, but there's not a lot that's going to be waiting for you in Republic City. Mako is there and I can't begin to imagine how much you must miss him and how much he must miss you, but he's so busy that I worry he won't have time to spend... And there's Asami and Korra and they're just as caught up in everything as Mako. I heard Korra and Asami talking when we were on the way to get you, and it didn't sound like they were going to bring you with them wherever it was that they went. I wondered if maybe knowing that, if it might tempt you to stay here."

            Silent, Bolin kept thinking for a while after Opal went quiet. He watched the changing expression on her face. It had been brave of her to say the things she said, but that bravery was fading fast and there was no hiding it. Then again, Opal had never tried to hide herself from him.

            "Why?" Bolin asked.

            "...Why?"

            "Why do you want me to stay here?" Bolin paused after he'd repeated the question, looked down, glanced sheepishly at the wall. "Yeah, you said I don't have much to go home to in Republic City, but there has to be another reason."

            "Why does there have to be another reason?"

            "Because the Opal I used to know would have another reason. The Opal I used to know would have a better reason."

            This seemed to fluster her. She started to fidget. Bolin knew he'd been right. Opal wanted him to stay home for something beyond what she'd said, for something personal, if he had to infer. If it wasn't personal, she wouldn't be acting so nervous.

            He sighed. "You know you can talk to me," he suggested. "I know it's probably scary to think about, considering how I reacted the last time you all tried to talk to me, but I promise it's safe to say whatever it is you need to say."

            Opal looked profoundly guilty, but she glanced up at him all the same. "It was a lot easier to think about this stuff before you were actually here."

            Bolin offered as disarming a smile as he could.

            "I've been talking with my mom," Opal started.

            "Dangerous."

            "And I've had a long, long time to think about how we ended things. I remember before we got your brother I told you that I wanted to try again. I wanted to try _us_ again, I mean, and I'd still like to try. I missed you."

            "I figured it was something like that."

            A hopeful gleam came into Opal's eye, but the look on Bolin's face shut it down. It was only fair for her to have the whole picture, but still Bolin hesitated. Would it be fair if he told her now? He was about to hop on an airship straight out of Zaofu. How could he tell her and then leave?

            "You're going to say no," Opal predicted glumly, and Bolin offered her a nod and a sheepish glance. He couldn't argue with her about it. He _was_ going to say no. But then Opal took a very deep breath and seemed to steel herself. "There was someone else, wasn't there?"

            For a moment, Bolin wanted to stammer. The old Bolin would've stammered. Instead, he drew a calming breath and stood there for a few moments he spent clearing the immediate panic out of his head, and then he said, "Yeah, there was."

            "Someone other than Korra?"

            "What?"

            "Was it someone other than Korra?" Opal's tone wasn't glum anymore, it was a little stern. It was a tone that demanded an answer, and Bolin wasn't sure that he knew how to provide it. "Was it Sun? Was there someone before the sand benders?"

            "No," Bolin said carefully. "It wasn't Sun."

            "Someone before her?"

            Bolin felt very confused.

            "I know what happened."

            "You what now?"

            "I know what happened. With Korra. And you."

            This time Bolin did stammer. No amount of deep breathing or rationalization could keep him from stammering. Opal had blindsided him with the simple statement, and he didn't know how to react. He floundered, opening his mouth to say something, to offer some kind of excuse or explanation, but then he closed it again only to open it again a few seconds later. It seemed to go on forever until finally he managed to stutter out a very disbelieving, "How?" before clamming up.

            At some point he'd ceased leaning against the table. There wasn't anything casual about this conversation anymore. This conversation had gone from zero to deadly in less than five minutes. Bolin was terrified.

            "My mom isn't as clever as she thinks she is. I heard her talking about it with my dad."

            Bolin kept floundering.

            "It was like three or four days after you left and I kept seeing Korra around. She looked awful. And, you know, my mom said that she was staying to help search for you but she never went anywhere. I was already curious because she was supposed to have gone to the Banyan Grove Tree to try and find you, but then I saw her in my mom's office when she was supposed to be gone. It was all really fishy, so I went to talk to my mom and dad about it and overheard them talking. They never said anything too detailed, but I kind of figured that they wouldn't mention you and Korra's period in the same conversation if something hadn't happened."

            "Oh."

            "You look sick."

            "I feel kind of sick."

            Opal laughed gently, a short but genuine laugh. It was a sound Bolin hadn't heard since before the collapse. "What were you expecting?"

            "Not that."

            She was watching him with an expectant look, but she said nothing.

            "And not that reaction, either."

            "I was pretty torn up about it when I figured it out," Opal said. The joy was gone from her voice now. "I cried a lot. I worked really hard to hide it from my mom and I think I did a pretty good job. Probably helped that I was so upset that you'd left."

            "Opal," Bolin said pleadingly, exasperated, "I didn't--"

            Opal held up her hand, and Bolin went silent. He felt a little weak in the knees now. But when she spoke it was with kindness, with an understanding that Bolin didn't expect. He couldn't wrap his head around how calm she was being.

            "Things were messed up then. They were really, really messed up. I hated you, and there was a time when I didn't want you to come home because I knew what you'd done and I knew that you left on those horrible terms. There was a time where I honestly didn't care if you were alive or not."

            Bolin wanted to say he was sorry, but something had closed his throat. All he could do was feel lightheaded and terrible and conflicted. Was Opal scolding him or was she explaining? Was she warning him? Was she encouraging him? She already said that she wanted to give it another shot, hadn't she? But _why_? _How_? Was she out of her mind?

            He opened his mouth to talk again, and this time Opal remained quiet, watching him with that same expectant look she'd turned on him before.

            "I don't understand."

            The second the words came out of him, Bolin felt stupid. He didn't know why he felt stupid. It had been the truth.

            Opal sat for a while in quiet, watching. Myriad expressions crossed her face and faded to nothing, came back in a slow and gentle cycle that told Bolin, if nothing else, that she was interested by something. It might've been a thoughtful look the crept in and out. He just couldn't tell.

            Then Opal scooted forward on the bed. Then she stood.

            Bolin froze as Opal approached. The feeling hit as soon as her feet touched the floor and he knew that he didn't know and he understood that he would never understand. Something in her drove her forward at the same time that something in her made her hesitate. She was a jumble the same as Korra was, but her jumble didn't feel quite so hostile. Her jumble felt... Jumbly.

            Before Bolin knew it, Opal was beside him, and then her arms were around him and he felt her melting into him the same way she'd melted into him before he'd ruined everything. In that moment it didn't matter how she felt like a bunched-up ball of conflicting emotions because in that moment she felt like Opal, and Opal felt like hope. Opal felt like love that Bolin hadn't experienced in far, far too long.

            "Will you please stay?"

            The moment was gone. Opal had made the plea into his chest, her voice muffled and desperate. She'd already asked this, but the first time hadn't been so gut wrenching. The first time she'd asked the question Bolin was certain that she was going to abandon him, but she hadn't.

            There was a part of Bolin that wanted to stay. An enormous part of him wanted to stay. If Opal was willing to accept him and Su was willing to accept him and everything would end up a fairy tale ending that he'd never imagined would come, why wouldn't he take it? Why would he pass up that chance?

            Despite the desire, in the back of Bolin's mind, Republic City was calling. Mako was calling. There was too much left unresolved, and Bolin knew beyond doubt that staying any longer in Zaofu wouldn't change that. He'd come home to solve problems, not abandon them the moment something better came along. He had to resolve everything. He wouldn't rest easy until he'd resolved _everything_.

            "I can't."

            The words came out of Bolin all soft so that Opal's only response was to tighten her hold on him, to bury her face harder into his chest. She wasn't crying. He felt no tears, no silent sobs. Opal didn't feel very sad at all, Bolin recognized. She didn't feel angry, either. Still, he felt the instinctual need to comfort her, the same instinctual need he'd felt countless times in the past when she'd come to him with all manner of hurt, emotional and physical, when he'd been the only thing she'd sought to help her feel better.

            He wasn't sure what gave him the right, but he did it all the same.

            "I appreciate what you said," Bolin continued on, his explanation just as soft as Opal's pleading had been, "but I can't stay. Your mom told me she forgives me, and now you've told me that you forgive me, and those two things are worlds apart from what I thought would happen when I came back here. It's not what I deserve."

            He stopped suddenly, the word clipped. Sun would've berated him. She wouldn't have let him finish the statement. She would've argued. He knew because he'd had the argument with her too many times to count, and it ran through his head despite himself. Why didn't he deserve it? What evil, evil thing had he done that rendered him undeserving of happiness for the rest of his life? He'd made mistakes. He'd done wrong. He'd done horribly, horribly wrong, but why did that mean he had to stay miserable?

            It didn't.

            Anymore, it wasn't his past keeping him from happiness, Bolin thought. It was his future, or what he thought his future would be if he left things the way they presently were. Sure, he could stay in Zaofu with Opal and Su and pretend he was a Beifong, and maybe someday be able to _stop_ pretending and marry and have the family he'd always dreamed of, but if he chose that path there would always remain a niggling thought, a deep regret that he'd left such a mess in his wake. He had to clean up after himself or the mess would suck every ounce of joy out of his life until the end.

            "I need to go back to Republic City so that I can fix the things that I messed up," Bolin explained. "It's selfish and horrible, but until I get it all taken care of I won't be able to live with myself. I'm glad you can forgive me, but I can't accept it yet."

            Opal pulled away and looked up, her forehead wrinkled.

            "It seems like I'm asking people too much," Bolin admitted. "I just got home and I've already asked for so many favors. It just feels _wrong_." He stopped, and then, as he did so many times before, he dropped his eyes to the floor in submission. "Opal, is there any way that you could wait? For me?"

            "Wait for you?"

            He nodded. "I need to make things right with Korra. I don't deserve anyone's love until I do that. I have to... I don't know. I don't know how I'm going to do it, but I have to make it right. Can you wait to forgive me until I've done that?"

            She jerked her head: Yes.

            "And I heard you when you said you wanted to try again, and I'm willing to try, too, but it's not going to be the same as it was before. We're going to have to rebuild from the ground up. Everything has to start over. And none of that is going to be able to happen until I'm ready. It's not going to be able to happen until I've done the things I need to do back home. Can you wait for that?"

            Yes.

            Opal threw her arms around him again and squeezed as if to emphasize her point, then pulled away. This time she looked weepy, but Bolin didn't know what to do to help. She wiped the tears away from her eyes and smiled sadly. "Would it be okay, then, if I just sat with you until you go? Can we just pretend for a little while? Talk?"

            Bolin agreed. There was nothing else he could do, and there was nothing else he wanted to do. So, the two of them sat together on Bolin's bed the same way they'd sat on his bed before, and they talked about nothing in particular until the time came for him to go.

*****

            Mako didn't know how to feel, not even when Bolin stood before him looking as Bolin-like as it was possible for someone to look, all healthy and with full color in his face. If he was honest, Mako thought there was too much color in Bolin's face, but he supposed it was only natural considering that Bolin had been in the desert for the last near-year.

            For a while the two stood there on the landing pad on Air Temple Island staring at each other. It was hard for Mako to believe that the person who stepped off the airship was indeed his little brother, because when Bolin had run off he'd been as frail and decrepit as a sick old man. Now he was strapping, in a way, not as big or powerful as he'd been in his prime but close enough that it was almost uncanny. Bolin in his prime had been enormous, well-muscled and finely honed, but Bolin now _wasn't_. He looked healthy. He looked sturdy. He looked like he'd been working some ridiculously laborious task that would have taken the place of his neurotic gym regiment.

            All the two had been able to say to one another was a stilted, very awkward, "Hey."

            Mako didn't hear much of the conversation as the day progressed, not because he wasn't listening but because he was too distracted by other things. He was distracted by his own muted reaction to Bolin's homecoming, by everyone else's overwhelming joy with the notable exceptions of Korra, who disappeared to her room almost as soon as she'd disembarked from the airship, and Bolin himself, who seemed incapable of expressing any kind of happiness beyond polite, forced half-smiles. Bolin distracted Mako because far more had changed than merely his physique. But no matter how intently Mako watched, he couldn't put his finger on exactly what the difference was.

            It had taken some time for him to understand when Asami pulled him aside and informed him that Bolin didn't want to stay at the apartment, that Bolin had requested at some point before they'd touched down to stay with Asami at the Future Industries compound. Of course, Asami also said that she'd tried to convince Bolin otherwise, but admitted that she hadn't pushed very hard because she wasn't sure exactly how hard she could push. Then there was the matter of _support_.

            "You're going to be working every day the same way you've been working every day for the last six months," Asami explained gently, "and that's fine. But he's going to need someone around. He's going to need support."

            Mako nodded his understanding even though he didn't understand. As Bolin's older brother, it was his duty to support Bolin no matter what, and thus far, he'd done his best. He'd supported Bolin through thick and thin, through their parents' deaths and homelessness and triad ridiculousness and everything else up until the point when Mako had gone off to Ba Sing Se and been kidnapped and ruined.

            He returned home that evening just as alone as he'd been when he'd left, and when Pabu greeted him at the door, wearing a look of complete bewilderment, Mako had burst into tears. He'd stood in the doorway like that for a long time, uncertain why he was crying and wondering if there was something wrong with him. He wondered if there was something about him that had pushed Bolin away, that had convinced Bolin that coming home and being a family again wasn't a good idea.

            Admittedly, Mako knew he'd changed, and it hadn't been the same subtle, unplaceable change that had come over Bolin. Mako knew exactly what it was: He'd grown up, matured, focused. He exuded authority because his job required him to exude authority, and he'd made those changes very deliberately. Dealing with people as important as the Firelord and the President of the United Republic required a certain degree of statesmanship, of diplomacy and hard-nosed stubbornness that he hadn't had before the Society stole him away.

            Now was different, and the longer Mako thought on the matter the more he understood just how foolish he'd been to believe that things might return to the way they'd once been. Yes, Bolin might be back in Republic City, but _Bolin_ wasn't back yet. Mako wasn't sure that _Bolin_ would ever be back.

            A shower calmed Mako's nerves, and when he finally fell asleep with Pabu curled at the foot of his bed, he didn't dream.

            It was another three days before Mako saw Bolin again, days that Mako worked hard to fill with administrative and police duties. Within fifteen minutes of rising each morning he'd fed Pabu, grabbed something from the refrigerator for lunch, and was out the door to the precinct. He stayed there all day, cooped up in his office and hoping beyond hope that Beifong wouldn't come in to ask how things had been going. Then, after the whole building had cleared and the lights turned off for the night, Mako would wrap up his case file, stack the papers neatly on his desk, and head back home.

            By the fourth day, Mako felt rotten. Between skipping dinners and working himself dry, there wasn't much of him left to feel any better. By the fourth day he'd long since recognized the dip in his productivity and resigned himself to it, so that when Beifong finally poked her head into his office, he didn't even startle. He looked up at her, certainly, but there was no expectation in his head whatsoever. It was just Beifong.

            "Your brother is here," she said after a beat, and Mako found it weird that he was more surprised she hadn't called Bolin by name than by the fact that he was in the precinct at all. But then she stood there, stone faced as always, watching him as though she was expecting something. When Mako didn't respond, she asked, "Should I let him in?"

            "Yes," Mako replied. He'd said the word with the same professionalism he would've reserved for a high-profile diplomat. It was strange.

            Lin ducked her head out of the room and Mako could see her hand motioning vaguely from beyond the frosted glass window of his office door. Then the blurry figure Mako knew to be his brother appeared there, and Lin opened the door wide. Bolin stood there, but he wasn't looking at Mako. He was looking at Lin, and when she nodded at him, he nodded back.

            "Thanks," he said quietly, yet still he didn't enter.

            "Take as much time as you need," Lin said, and then she looked to Mako as though an afterthought had occurred to her. "I'll make sure your calls are forwarded straight to my desk."

            "Thanks, Chief."

            Even after Lin had gone, it took Bolin a few agonizingly long seconds to step into the room, seconds that Mako spent watching Bolin like an eagle-hawk while he wandered toward the desk. His eyes were anywhere but on Mako, and the expression on his face said clearly that he was, at the very least, impressed.

            "You mind if I sit?" Bolin asked when he'd finally gotten near enough.

            Mako nodded.

            Bolin sat.

            Silence fell.

            Again, Mako found himself watching, almost as though he was waiting for Bolin to make the first move or say the first word. It wasn't that Mako didn't know what to say--there were a thousand and more things he wanted to say--but rather that he didn't know how to begin. All the diplomacy he'd learned and practiced on Firelord Izumi and President Raiko and all the other diplomats seemed to have gone straight out the window, because his brother wasn't a diplomat and wasn't a foreign national and had no police business whatsoever that Mako could use to distance himself. He couldn't use his work as a means by which to achieve neutrality. While Bolin seemed as far away as ever, Mako understood that Bolin was still too close.

            Bolin breathed deep and began speaking, his eyes on the ground, and Mako found himself suddenly sitting forward on his own chair. "There's a lot we need to talk about."

            Ordinarily, Mako might have quipped that Bolin's words had been understatement. Instead, he sat silently.

            "I owe you an explanation. For why I'm staying with Asami instead of coming home right away."

            Mako opened his mouth, and he managed to get out the first throaty squeak of, "Don't worry about it," before Bolin cut him off not by interrupting him directly, but by simply holding up his hand to indicate that Mako didn't need to say the words.

            Bolin had never been able to communicate like that before.

            "I'm still a mess," Bolin explained, his voice perhaps quieter now than it had been before. "Asami and Opal explained to me how much work you've been taking on, how important you've gotten in the last few months, how tired you are all the time. I don't blame you, though. It's a good opportunity. But knowing what I know about you and knowing what I know about me, I thought it would be really unfair for me to saddle you with any more work than you've already got on your plate."

            Mako's face screwed up without his meaning it to, but Bolin didn't seem to mind. If Bolin did mind, he didn't say anything about it.

            "Asami was the one who convinced me to come home. She was the one I talked to when the girls showed up, and I explained to her everything that was going on with me. She didn't care. She said that we could work through whatever... Quirks... I've still got going on as long as it meant I would come home."

            "She's always been that way," Mako observed dumbly.

            "Yeah, she has," Bolin agreed. "So, on the way home, I sat down a couple of times and talked to Asami, and after a lot of hard thinking she and I figured that it might be best if I stay with her until I get my night terrors under control. She sets her own schedule, you know, so if I need someone to sit up with me for a few hours in the middle of the night while I work myself out of a panic attack, she can be there for me."

            Mako wanted to argue that he could be there, too, but he recognized the futility in it before he could so much as open his mouth.

            "And I've needed it, too. I've needed her. I was up twice last night, once the night before that. I have nightmares all the time, and since I left the commune they've gotten worse. It's gotten harder to control. When I was in the desert I had a routine. I had places to go and people that I could talk to, and if things got really, really bad I could force myself to calm down with the cactus juice. I don't have any of that here. My routine is gone, so until I can figure things out for myself, this is how it has to be."

            "I understand," Mako said, and he truly did understand. Then he drew a breath and plopped his chin onto his hand. "You're welcome to come home whenever you want. Pabu would be happy to see you."

            Bolin smiled sheepishly at the mention of Pabu. "I'd be happy to see him, too, I think."

            It was progress.

            The silence washed back in like a high tide, and with it came all manner of topics that Mako wanted to discuss. First came the Korra issue, but Mako reasoned that it was too soon and too touchy of a topic to broach right now. While it was certainly a huge problem, Mako wasn't sure that he wanted to jeopardize this positive interaction with it. Second came the nagging curiosity. Where had Bolin been this whole time? Sure, the letter from Hackey or whatever his name was had accounted for some of Bolin's time, but it had been a far stretch from a detailed report. Maybe it was the cop coming out, but Mako wanted to know it all. Third was worry, because every time Mako looked at his little brother sitting curled in the chair opposite, he noticed another thing that had changed: The tan from the desert, the callouses on his hands, what looked like a new crease in his forehead that Mako could only guess had come from all the worrying. He wanted to ask about the way Bolin was carrying himself, if he'd completely relearned how to walk, if he'd been coached on how to speak to people, because the Bolin that Mako had grown up with had never been so soft-spoken and reserved.

            Mako didn't have the chance to say any of it. Bolin didn't let him.

            "I talked with Opal before we left Zaofu. She said she wants to get back together."

            Mako gawked.

            "I told her no."

            "What?"

            "I told her no," Bolin repeated. "Well, I told her that I wasn't ready. I have some things I need to take care of before then, things I need to work out with all of you. I just thought it was wild that she would be so willing to accept me after everything I did to her. I don't understand it."

            Mako didn't understand it either, but then again, he'd never really been in love. At least, he didn't think he had. He still wasn't sure if what he'd had with Toru qualified as love, because after night upon night of reflecting on it, Mako could only conclude two things: It had been relieving for him at the time, and if he was still contemplating it a year later, it must have been important.

            "I want to help you with the Society of Firebenders."

            There was one thing that hadn't changed, Mako thought. Bolin had always been full of surprises.

            "Su and Asami filled me in, like I said. She told me that you were all planning to go run some investigations on Society camps."

            "And you want in on it?" Mako couldn't help the incredulity in his voice because the last thing he'd imagined Bolin would want to do was go back to a Society encampment. Considering what had happened last time--the massacre that had happened last time--Mako had been certain that Bolin would want nothing to do with any of it.

            "I don't know yet," Bolin said, "but I wanted to ask you where you got the intel to know where you're going."

            "Combustion bender," Mako replied candidly. "The guy who attacked you, I guess. Turns out he was Yaozhu's brother and had a fair bit of information."

            A distinct furrow came to Bolin's brow, and the crease Mako had noticed earlier deepened. It was as though a shadow had come over Bolin's face, a mildly dangerous shadow that reminded Mako a little too much of the crazy Bolin that had attacked him in Zaofu. But Bolin didn't move, he didn't shudder with rage, he didn't clench his jaw. He just sat, watching his hands fidgeting in his lap, in what Mako recognized as serious thought.

            Then Bolin said, "I want to see him."

            "What?"

            Mako hated how that was his first reaction to any ridiculous thing that came out of Bolin's mouth.

            "I want to talk to him. Do you think you can arrange for that to happen?"

            "Why in the world would you want to talk to the guy that tried to kill you?"

            Now Bolin's jaw did clench, just once, and then it relaxed again. A deep breath and Bolin's eyes came up, met Mako's square on, and the intensity there set a shiver down Mako's spine. It was a look beyond any that he'd seen on his brother's face before.

            "Do you trust me?" Bolin asked, then his face softened and he repeated himself, rephrased the question just slightly. "Do you think you’ll ever be able to trust me again?"

            It took a longer time than Mako had hoped, but eventually he managed a short nod.

            "Then make the arrangements."

           


	57. Brittle, Horrible Silence

            Seeing the combustion bender had been at the bottom of Bolin's list of things to do once he was back in the city. Up until his conversation with Mako at police headquarters, the idea of visiting the cell hadn't been so much as a shadow of a thought in the back of his mind, but that all changed the second Mako mentioned him. Maybe it was the way Mako talked about him, the way he so casually discussed how he had provided all of the intelligence that the United Forces and Republic City Police were using to crack down on the Society of Firebenders, or maybe it was Bolin's new perspective on humanity in general, but Bolin wasn't satisfied with the explanation. He wasn't satisfied with how trusting his brother was being. Bolin knew something was up.

            He wasn't surprised by how long it took Mako to make the arrangements. Partly it was because he knew that Mako was going to have to go through Beifong, and because he knew what Beifong had seen the last time he'd gone to the cell. That night had been the beginning of the end for him, Bolin knew, because that night had been his first breakdown, his first loss of control, the night when everyone had found out what he'd been doing to himself and how badly the collapse had actually affected him. It had marked the shift between old Bolin and new Bolin, and he'd hated the memory ever since. Bearing that horrible night in mind, Bolin would've been surprised if Beifong had taken any less time to make the call.

            Fully a week after he'd made the request, Mako called Future Industries Tower to announce that everything was a go, and that he would pick Bolin up the next morning to be on their way. Mako also reported that Beifong wouldn't be joining them. That had been the most surprising detail of all because Bolin had been certain that Lin would want to be there. He was certain she'd worry that something unseemly might happen.

            The next morning Mako arrived just as he'd arranged, and by ten o'clock the brothers were on their way through the heart of Republic City, driving toward its eastern boundary and the combustion bender's isolated metal cell. They didn't talk, but they didn't need to. Bolin could feel everything in Mako that he needed to feel: nervousness, anticipation, fear. And it gave Bolin time to think, too, time to figure out what he would need to do to get the right information to help his brother and Korra and Asami.

            Mako didn't take his eyes off the road to glance at Bolin once, not even in passing, so when Mako finally stopped outside of the remote building and all but slammed the car into park, it startled Bolin just a little.

            "So what's your plan here, then?" Mako asked. He turned fully in his seat, locked narrowed, intense eyes on Bolin that might at one point have made Bolin's stomach squirm. "I tried to be delicate and not bother you about why you wanted to come here, but now that I've gotten you in, I need to know your angle."

            "I'm trying to tie up loose ends," Bolin said coolly. It was a lie in every way; there were no loose ends to tie up with the man in the cell. But there was the issue of trust, and Bolin harbored none of that where the Society was concerned. Mako didn't need to know that, though, didn't need to know that Bolin was there to test the combustion bender's information, to discern whether or not the Republic City Police had been played. "I need to see him to know if I'm over what happened. Call it facing fears or confronting demons or whatever you want."

            Mako's face softened, took on a look of well-concealed incredulity, and the nervousness in him faded. Bolin wondered if Mako had seen through the lie, but he truly doubted it. One of the fortunate byproducts of learning to read truth through the vibrations in the earth was that Bolin had learned to lie more effectively himself. It was a necessary part of seeing. He'd learned to spot tics and quirks among people in the midst of lying such that he'd been able to recognize them in himself, and by recognizing them in himself he found he could temper them.

            Bolin wondered absently if that was why people had seemed to treat him differently since he'd returned to the city. He was more reserved, it was true, because he'd made a point to learn how to be more reserved, to conceal his feelings and put them on hold until he could think about why he was feeling them and determine the best way to cope. He'd learned to keep an outward front of indifference that Sun had often described as _impersonal_ and _cold_ , but he'd had to learn and he'd had to practice. It was part of how he'd reigned in his more manic impulses, part of how he'd wrenched back control over his life. Maybe that indifferent expression was why people were so hesitant to engage with him.

            Or maybe they just remembered how he used to be.

            "Come on," Mako said, his voice all flat and quiet, and he opened his car door. "Let's get this done, then. I've got business I need to take care of."

            Bolin followed, and the closer he got to the cell the more a pit opened wide in his stomach. He hadn't expected his nerves to hit him like this, and he didn't know why they were coming on so suddenly. Since returning to Republic City his panics had been relegated to the overnight hours, the times when the world was quiet and his mind was left to roam back to horrible memories of Fire Fountain City and insanity and horror. During the days it all condensed into a weird, heavy ball that sat in his chest as though waiting to bloom into a well of anxiety. That hadn't yet happened; there must not have been the right catalyst. But now he was in the place where it all began--or where it all ended--and Bolin couldn't reason himself out of being worried.

            He just hoped that he could keep it controlled.

            He whispered to himself. "Stop. You're not in danger. You're safe with Mako. There's no reason to panic. You're in control."

            "What?"

            Bolin looked up to find Mako watching him, and the look on Mako's face made Bolin feel stupid. The anxiety flared all over again, obscuring the earth. He said, "Nothing," dropped his eyes to the floor, and followed Mako into the cell.

            The room was nothing like what he remembered, because what he remembered was a barren stone chamber with no furnishings, in which a cocky combustion bender was bound to the middle of the floor. Now there was a small cot with a pillow and a ramshackle desk with a metal prison chair, atop which sat what looked like a lamp from one of the desks in the precinct. Worse than that, the combustion bender wasn't bound at all.

            It seemed to take no time for the combustion bender to notice Bolin in the same way that it took no time for Bolin to notice him. The combustion bender looked at Mako first, seemed almost casual about it, but when he saw Bolin his eyes went wide and he stood rigid. The combustion bender looked surprised. He felt surprised, too, Bolin noted.

            For his part, Bolin stopped dead. The anxiety went well beyond blooming and it happened in a fraction of a second. The roots of his panic spread out and took hold, seemed to wrap around his throat so that his breaths came shorter than he could mask. He felt a shiver, a weakness in his knees. It was the same feeling he got in the night.

            The combustion bender broke the stare-down without a gesture, turned to Mako and seemed to relax. It was suddenly like Bolin wasn't even there.

            "Captain," said the combustion bender in greeting, "I wasn't expecting you."

            Mako tossed Bolin a glance of concern before pressing forward into the room and offering up a short but formal bow. "You've met my brother." Mako gestured toward Bolin, and Bolin stepped forward very tentatively. His feet felt as though they'd been encased in lead. "Bolin, this is Sheng."

            So the combustion bender had a name.

            "Bo has been recovering," Mako explained, a little tentative himself, "and he wanted to come here as part of that recovery."

            Sheng nodded, and he tipped his head toward Bolin in greeting. Then, perhaps kindly, he said, "You look better than the last time I saw you."

            "So do you."

            Bolin wasn't sure that he'd meant the words to come out as hotly as they had, but he also supposed that it didn't matter. Hearing the combustion bender speak had done something to counteract the welling panic, made something like anger rise up in him strongly enough to balance things out. Maybe the anger took over somewhat, even, but no matter what, it was enough to allow Bolin to tune in to the earth.

            "I suppose you're looking for an apology," Sheng continued somewhat sharply, "for what I did to you."

            "I didn't come here for an apology," Bolin replied, his voice steadier now, "and I wouldn't accept it even if you gave me one."

            "Fair enough. Why did you come here, then?"

            "Curiosity."

            It wasn't a lie.

            "I attacked you before I understood the whole picture," Sheng said. "That was before I knew what kind of an evil person His Excellency was, before I knew what he could do."

            Bolin wanted to counter that _His Excellency_ wasn't the only evil person in the room, that Sheng had done enough harm to rank up there somewhere. Still, he kept his mouth shut and allowed the monologue. It gave him a chance to read the earth, to see what Sheng felt like when he was lying.

            "Even if you won't accept it, I'm going to offer you my apology. It's a shame you and I had to meet on such bad terms."

            Biting back a scathing reply, Bolin looked at Mako instead and asked, "Didn't you have some business to take care of?"

            "Oh," Mako seemed to have been caught off guard by the sudden attention. It looked to Bolin like some of the color had drained out of his face, and there was no covering up the surprised arch of his brow or the apprehensive wrinkle in his forehead. It was weird, Bolin thought, because before all of this, Mako had been good at covering his emotions. "That's right. Sheng, I came here because I got some new intelligence that I wanted to discuss with you. Can we sit?"

            Sheng nodded, led Bolin and Mako toward the desk, and he pulled the chair out. Then, looking convincingly downcast, he said, "Unfortunately I've got only one chair."

            Wanting to waste no time, Bolin drew forth two modestly sized earthen pillars from the ground, and he took a seat atop one of them. Without prompt, Mako sat atop the other. Then Sheng sat, and at the same time Mako began his discussion, Bolin focused again on the earth.

            "We've been raiding the camps at the locations you provided for us," Mako began, straight to the point, "and we've recovered quite a few people who broke loyalty with the Society quickly. You know that we've been trying to figure out where Guan is so that we can decapitate this whole thing, but so far the locations haven't turned much up on him. Well, to make a long story very short, we got a couple new tips and I wanted to get your opinion."

            "Of course, Captain."

            Bolin didn't like how formal the combustion bender was. He liked it even less that he kept calling Mako _Captain._ Still, he didn't interrupt. Instead, he cast his eyes to the ground, closed them, and listened.

            "I've got three leads right now. The least promising so far is Bei Lu, in the west Fire Nation."

            "There is no base there," Sheng said. It was an honest reply.

            "The second is a place up near Chalang City. It was given to me by two separate prisoners as being a housing facility, and each one of them said that Guan had been known to stay there."

            Sheng looked to be thinking about this for a few moments, and Bolin felt nothing in him but emptiness. Then Sheng shook his head, and he looked Mako dead in the eyes to say, "Yes, there is an encampment there, but His Excellency didn't stay often. He went occasionally for a few days, as my understanding goes, but he stayed there no longer than he stayed at any other housing facility."

            Mako nodded. Bolin noted with passing interest that Mako was fidgeting with his hands folded between his knees. It wasn't like Mako to seem so nervous.

            "That leaves one more," Mako continued, none of the nerves apparent in his voice, "and that's in the Hudayao Islands in the southern Earth Kingdom."

            "I see," said Sheng, and Bolin noted a little twinge of something in him. "What does your intelligence say?"

            With a shake of his head, Mako sighed. "It was just one guy who said that there was another housing facility on one of the islands out there, but he couldn't give any details. He wasn't in good shape when we got to him."

            "I don't have any knowledge of a housing facility in that area," Sheng said, his voice as steady as stone. Bolin felt differently, though, had noted an unmistakable shift in the earth the second Mako mentioned the Hudayao Islands, and everything after that said as plain as day that Sheng wasn't being truthful.

            Bolin kept his mouth shut.

            "See, I wondered," Mako mused. "Of the three leads, the one in Chalang City seemed to be the most credible because more people mentioned it. It's not often that two people would mention one place without consulting each other first. The other two places felt like long shots to me."

            "I wish I could be of more help to you, Captain," Sheng said, his voice full of genuine remorse that Bolin knew was fake, "but I don't know where His Excellency is nor where he might be. I couldn't wager a guess to save my life, but I wouldn't start in the islands."

            It was a lie. It was a bald faced lie.

            "I understand," Mako said without any matter of skepticism. "I appreciate your cooperation, Sheng. You'll let me know if you think of anything that might let us know where Guan might be hiding out?"

            "Absolutely, Captain. It would be my pleasure."

            "Good." Mako nodded and stood. "Then I suppose we should get out of your hair and get on with it. You can expect to hear from me whenever I get more intel."

            Sheng stood at the same time that Mako did, and he offered Mako the same polite, formal bow that Mako had offered earlier. He didn't acknowledge Bolin at all. "Of course. If it's all right, I'll likely have another letter next time you visit."

            Mako nodded. "It'll be sent the same way as usual."

            "Thank you, sir."

            "Bo?" Mako asked, "was there anything else you needed to take care of before we go? You said you wanted to talk--"

            "I'm good," Bolin replied shortly. "I've got all I need."

            Bolin felt uncertain as he and Mako exited the cell and made their way back to the Satomobile for the long drive home. He'd always had a feeling that Mako was being lied to, a hunch that he'd developed after hearing everyone talk about the investigation into the Society, after listening to them describe how they were always a step or two behind where they needed to be despite months of intensive work. When Mako mentioned the combustion bender as being their primary informant, that feeling solidified. There was no other explanation for the constant failing of the operation. Bolin didn't know how Mako hadn't seen it. Was he that lost in diplomacy?

            Visiting the combustion bender had been the formality that Bolin needed to verify his hunch as truth, had paid off as well as he could have hoped, but now Bolin was left with the task of telling Mako exactly what was going on. He would have to tell Mako that his primary informant was lying and had probably been lying for months. With that explanation, Bolin knew he would have to explain himself, too, how he knew about the lies, and that would invite too many new problems that Bolin wasn't sure he was ready to tackle. Everyone was treating him differently already, had been distant and guarded; he couldn't imagine how things would change if the others knew he could read their emotions and their honesty like an open book.

            Eventually Bolin saw the top of the Republic City skyline peeking over the hills, and he knew he was running out of time. He breathed slowly twice, and settled on his angle.

            "Mako?"

            "Yeah, bro?"

            "Why exactly do you trust that guy? The combustion bender, I mean. After what he did to me, how do you know you can trust him?"

            Bolin watched Mako's face crinkle up as Mako thought. It didn't stay that way long.

            "You remember Yaozhu?" Mako asked, answering Bolin's question with a question, and when Bolin nodded, Mako nodded in kind. "That was Sheng's little brother. Both of us had our lives derailed by Guan and the Society, and appealing to that loss made him sympathetic to us. He hasn't provided any bad information, and has been reasonable in all his requests and everything. I've got no reason to suspect him of anything. I can trust him."

            Bolin looked at his feet. "Just because you feel like you can trust that guy, it doesn't make him trustworthy."

            "What?"

            "Just because you can trust someone doesn't always mean you should. And just because you shouldn't trust someone, it doesn't mean that you can't."

            "What are you even talking about?"

            "You've got no reason to believe me about anything, not with my being gone so long and my coming home in the middle of this. After everything I said and everything I did, all the lies I told and all the crazy you had to put up with, you've got every right to drop me like a sack of bricks. But I'm going to ask you to trust me even if you shouldn't." Bolin paused and he looked up to see Mako looking back in total confusion. "Can you do that?"

            Mako shook his head dumbly. "What?"

            "The combustion bender was lying."

            "What?"

            "He was lying, Mako, about the base in the Hudayao Islands. About Guan."

            "I don't understand."

            "You told him about three places," Bolin explained as patiently as he could, "and he answered you honestly about two of them. There's not a place by Bei Lu and there is one by Chalang that your guy visits occasionally, but Sheng lied as plain as day about the Hudayao Islands. There's something there."

            "How could you possibly know that?"

            Bolin was caught off guard by what sounded like anger in Mako's voice. Maybe it was plain incredulity. Either way, it was a hostile emotion that Bolin didn't want to make any worse. All the same, he wasn't sure how to address the truth. He wasn't sure how to tell Mako how he knew.

            Mako didn't stop long enough to allow Bolin to begin his explanation. "We've had four truth seers up there to talk to him, to listen to our conversations. They've reviewed his letters. None of them ever told us that he was lying. He told the truth to all of them. He's been grilled, Bo, we've got no--"

            "Did you tell him that they were coming?"

            "What?"

            "Did you tell him that the truth seers were going to be there?"

            "Of course we did! It's code. We can't bring a truth seer in to talk to a perp unless we've been given permission and everyone is aware. Violating that code could get me fired."

            "That's why," Bolin pressed on. He found himself working harder than he thought to maintain an even tone of voice. "If you told him that there would be truth seers, of course he was going to tell you the truth. Lying with them in the room would betray your trust, and then he'd lose the upper hand he's managed to get."

            Very suddenly, Mako pulled the car over and stopped on the side of a road overlooking the Republic City Bay, and Mako turned properly to face Bolin angrily. "Cut the garbage, Bo. What the heck are you talking about?"

            "He was lying. I know. I can tell."

*****

            Mako felt dreadful for the rest of the ride back to Republic City. Bolin had said the phrase as bluntly as he'd ever said anything in his life, and whether it was the tone of voice that Bolin had employed or the implications of the statement, something about the whole thing unnerved Mako deeply.

            Bolin knew that Sheng was lying. He could tell.

            But how? Mako had asked but Bolin said that he wanted to explain when Korra and Asami were there, too, and then Bolin had clammed up and gone cold. Thus, Mako was unable to think about anything else until he'd pulled the Satomobile back into its stall at police headquarters and returned to his office, Bolin in tow. Mako sat at his desk and stared at his telephone for a few uncomfortable moments before he sighed and looked up to Bolin, who paced absently about the room with his eyes on the floor.

            "When do you want to do this?" Mako asked. "I'd just as soon call Asami and Korra now and take care of it as soon as possible."

            Bolin stopped pacing, and Mako saw his shoulders heave with a sigh. "Yeah," he said, "I agree. Call them."

            Mako made the calls, and the whole while he was on the phone, Bolin continued to pace. Once or twice he rubbed at his forehead, and if Mako watched very closely he could see Bolin's mouth moving like he was repeating something to himself over and over again while he walked. Mako wondered if Bolin knew he was doing it.

            The phone calls went as smoothly as Mako imagined they would. Asami had agreed to host everyone in her office at the Future Industries Tower, and Korra had agreed, albeit tentatively, to show up if only for the intelligence that Mako promised her. He hadn't expected much differently, though, because Korra would put up with most anything if it meant coming closer to defeating the Society once and for all.

            After a while, Bolin stopped his pacing and slumped heavily into the empty chair on the other side of Mako's desk, and he didn't seem to mind that Mako kept going about his work. There were still a few things to take care of before he headed out for the day, and there was no better time than the present to handle them.

            "I'm sorry that I freaked you out," Bolin said out of the blue, drawing Mako's attention from some mundane paperwork. Mako didn't respond, instead choosing to watch Bolin shift in his chair. "When I told you that I knew he was lying, how I dodged your questions and all. I know I freaked you out. I wasn't trying to do that, you know, I wasn't trying to blow you off."

            "I know you weren't," Mako replied placatingly. It was an automatic response. He wasn't sure he'd meant it.

            "It's just that... Admitting what I'm going to admit to you guys, explaining all of this stuff, I mean, is going to be hard for me, but it's something that all of you have the right to know. Selfish as it is, I want to knock all of it out with one conversation. I just want to get it out of the way."

            "If it's so important, why didn't you speak up earlier?"

            "Because I haven't seen all three of you at the same time since I've been home. One of you is always missing. You know, part of the reason Asami wanted me to come home was so that Team Avatar could actually be a team again, but none of us has done a good job of making that happen."

            "Well, it's going to happen tonight."

            Bolin nodded. "I know, and I'm afraid."

            Mako was afraid, too, and his fear multiplied when Beifong barged into the room like a woman on a mission. She marched straight up to Mako's desk before he could utter a cursory, "Hey, Chief," stopped beside Bolin's chair, and leveled a hard look on Mako that made his heart freeze.

            "Well, how did it go?" she asked.

            "Uh," Mako started, and at the same time the noise came out of him he looked to Bolin. He wasn't sure why he looked to Bolin, either. It wasn't like Bolin could answer for him. "It was good."

            Beifong seemed dissatisfied with the answer. Her eyes narrowed dangerously. She stood rigid. "What did you find out?"

            Mako hesitated. Bolin had complicated things. On one hand, there was the option of telling Beifong the truth about what had happened, what Bolin said about Sheng lying and how there was quite possibly an undiscovered base in the Hudayao Islands where Guan could quite possibly be hiding out. But that would implicate Mako, would force him to admit to something that he didn't know was true, because if Bolin had been telling the truth about being able to tell the truth, Mako knew there would be trouble.

            The other option seemed more appealing, though it was unethical at best. The option of lying to Beifong was always open, though it wasn't something Mako employed often. She wasn't a truth seer, he knew that much, so she wouldn't know the difference no matter what Mako said. Selling it was all in his delivery, Mako knew, but he wasn't sure he could be convincing, not after he'd hesitated so much already.

            In the end, he decided to sprinkle some truth into the lie to make it more palatable.

            "He verified the intel we had." There, Mako thought, that wasn't so hard. "About Bei Lu and Chalang City, I mean, he verified what we got out of the latest round of converts."

            Beifong's face softened and she nodded her understanding. Beside her, however, Mako noted an increasingly curious expression taking over Bolin's face. In truth, the look Bolin was leveling on Mako now was more unnerving than any Beifong had ever leveled on him. Bolin knew. Bolin knew the truth, and he knew Mako was about to lie. But how? How in the world could he possibly know? And how could he convey that knowing so perfectly with little more than a look?

            "He wasn't sure about Hudayao, though. He said he'd never heard of anything down there, but it was because he'd never heard anyone mention it."

            Bolin looked away from Mako and Beifong the second Mako finished the statement. Mako didn't miss the move, but he didn't stop to acknowledge it either. He couldn't stop or he'd wind up botching the lie. He was never good at lying.

            "In short, there could be something there or there could not."

            "Well, I want you to comb through those files and figure it out," Beifong ordered. Then she looked at Bolin, who shot a petulant look back at her that was as far from unnerving as a look could possibly be. "And you?"

            "And me, what?" Bolin replied.

            Mako cringed. Of course, the first thing out of Bolin's mouth would be all confrontational and sarcastic. How could anyone expect anything different?

            "You got yourself figured out?"

            "Yeah."

            "Let me know if you need anything."

            "I will."

            "Good talk, kid."

            Mako wasn't sure what to make of the short conversation, because if he'd taken that tone with Lin she'd have told him off in nothing flat for being mouthy. She hadn't done anything of the kind with Bolin, had seemed totally unfazed by his distinctly guarded responses. And then it hit Mako that Bolin had talked to Lin in exactly the same tone that Lin had used herself.

            Without another word, Beifong exited the room. Once she'd gone, Mako breathed a very heavy sigh of relief and returned to his work. 

            Bolin stayed with Mako the rest of the day, and he stayed uncharacteristically quiet, sitting in Mako's spare office chair and alternating between staring at the walls, pacing, and fidgeting absently. While it wasn't necessarily distracting, it certainly didn't help Mako's mounting anticipation.

*****

            Bolin spent all afternoon thinking about how tense the evening would be with Korra in the same room for the first time since he'd returned home, but the truth of it was much different than he'd thought it might be. He'd expected some emotional outburst the second he and Mako entered the room, but Korra didn't say a word. Curled in one of the armchairs in Asami's personal office, she kept her hands folded between her knees and didn't so much as look up when they walked in. Instead, Asami was the one to greet them, and though she sounded bright, there was some weird aura hanging around her that Bolin didn't understand. It was like she was nervous, too. Everyone felt nervous. It made Bolin feel sick.

            Asami sat herself down on the sofa opposite Korra's chair, and Mako followed her, situating himself beside her comfortably. He greeted Korra as casually as he could, and she responded with a muted, "Hey." But then she went back to looking at her hands without acknowledging Bolin at all.

            For Bolin's part, he didn't take a seat. He stood away from the group where he felt a little more comfortable, leaning against Asami's desk with his arms folded defensively over his chest. He kept his eyes down and worked to control his breathing. He'd come home with every hope of rejoining Team Avatar insomuch as he could given the obvious barriers he'd erected, and owning up to his seismic sense was one of the most daunting hurdles he would ever have to jump.

            "So why did you want to see us?" Asami said to Mako, wasting no time in getting started. Bolin wondered if perhaps she was trying to diffuse the tension. "That was pretty short notice."

            "Well," Mako replied, matching Asami's tone, "it was actually Bo that wanted me to call you two." He paused and looked up to where Bolin stood, and when he waved Bolin over, Bolin just shook his head. "You're going to talk from there, then?"

            Bolin nodded. He wasn't a part of the group yet. He would have to wait until they accepted him to step into the circle. He couldn't approach before Korra was okay with it. He couldn't be close. "You can start. With the background. You know what we're here for."

            Mako floundered for a second before settling. "We went to see Sheng today," Mako began carefully, looking between Korra and Asami, "because I had gotten some information from a couple prisoners about potential housing facilities to investigate."

            "You had mentioned that you were going to go," Asami replied.

            "Yeah, well, Bolin went with me, and I asked Sheng all the questions I needed to. Long story short is that Bo thinks that Sheng was lying. That's as far as I got."

            Asami looked over then, and when Bolin noted her eyes on him, his stomach lurched. He watched her face as it ran through a number of expressions: curiosity, puzzlement, concentration. Finally it settled at concern, and her tone of voice matched. "Lying about what?"

            "This whole time, you've all been looking for the guy in charge, right? Guan or whatever?" Bolin began. "Well, the combustion bender knows where he is, and I'm pretty sure he's staying at a facility somewhere in the Hudayao Islands."

            "How do you know?" Asami asked without a hint of accusation.

            "Because he lied about it. I can tell." There it was. The place where he had left off with Mako. It should all be downhill from here.

            "No you can't."

            The second Korra's voice came out the sick feeling came back in spades. She'd sounded angry the same way she'd sounded angry aboard the airship, in Zaofu, and it shook Bolin's confidence to its core. He couldn't see her face, but he knew the look she must be wearing. Still, he had to get through the explanation. He had to do it at least for Asami and Mako. They had every right to know that Bolin could read them, and he had to be the one to tell them as clearly as possible. Otherwise it would breach their trust, and he couldn't afford any more of that.

            "Yes," Bolin insisted firmly, "I can. I could tell when he was lying."

            "Wh--" Mako didn't get through the disbelieving repetition before it seemed the truth finally dawned on him. Bolin watched it happen: Mako watched with his brow furrowed, but then his face softened and his jaw went slack. Every ounce of Mako's confusion drained out of him like a flood so that the next time Mako said, "Bo?" his voice was tiny and quiet and shaky.

            "Yeah," Bolin said at the same time he averted his gaze. The room was too quiet. "I can tell."

            "I don't--" Mako gaped.

            "What do you mean?" Asami interrupted. She was trying to understand just as much as Mako was, but she did a far better job of masking her skepticism.

            "I can read people," Bolin explained, "and that includes being able to tell when they're lying and when they're telling the truth. That combustion bender was lying. I could tell."

            It seemed like Mako couldn't stop stammering. The truth was still sinking in. "When did you..."

            "Right after the collapse. It's a long story. The point is, I've been able to do it for a while, to feel things through the earth and read the vibrations, but it wasn't until I landed in the sand bender commune that I really started understanding what it was I was actually doing. Yan taught me how--"

            "You're a truth seer?" Asami asked the question pointedly, and she nailed it. She'd taken a straight approach, and Bolin hadn't been prepared for that kind of honesty. It was ironic, given the circumstance.

            Bolin's mouth flapped senselessly and very much against his will. The easiest thing to do would be to say yes, but that wouldn't be the most accurate thing to do. No, he wasn't a truth seer as the others knew them, he wasn't always accurate, but he'd gotten good enough at reading people to know when something was up. He was enough of one that it didn't seem to make a difference. "I guess so, yeah." He said.

            "Why in the world didn't you tell me?" Mako asked, indignant. "Why didn't you speak up?"

            "I was afraid," Bolin admitted candidly.

            "Of what?"

            "Look at how you guys have been acting around me, Mako."

            "I've barely seen you! And I haven't had time to talk to Korra or Asami. I haven't seen anything!"

            "You've all been distant and afraid of me," Bolin said. "Even you, Asami. I notice it every time I walk in the room. And I've been afraid, too, because I've known this whole time how you've all felt toward me, and no matter how hard you guys try to cover it up, you can't. You can't lie to me like that anymore."

            "Of course." It was Korra again, and now she sounded dangerous. In the stunned silence that followed his admission, her voice was low and ice cold. She growled. "It's always something with you, isn't it?"

            Bolin didn't know what to say. He didn't know how to deescalate.

            "Korra," Asami cooed, ever the peacekeeper, "calm down. We've got to give him the chance to explain himself. We need to try to understand."

            "There's nothing to understand but him needing to be the center of attention all the time," Korra spat. "First it's 'oh look at me, I was attacked and got hurt because I was too stupid to protect myself,' and then it was 'look I'm crazy!'" Korra's voice was growing in volume and intensity in such a way that Bolin felt worse than he'd felt to begin with. Her words hurt. "And then you... You _ruin_ me and you run away and disappear for a year and come back all, 'look at me, with my weird tattoos and stupid hair, I'm a sand bender now! I'm a truth seer now! Well what _aren't_ you, Bolin, besides a decent human being?"

            "...Weird tattoos?" Mako stammered in the silence. "What?"

            "I can't believe you," Korra went on, ignoring Mako completely. "I can't believe you'd come in here and try to win us back because you're so fancy and _different_ now."

            "...Weird tattoos?" Mako repeated, even more disbelieving now. He was looking between everyone, apparently flabbergasted.

            Korra stood up, and the movement drew Bolin's attention. It seemed to draw Mako and Asami's attention, too. When Korra moved, Mako moved to stand alongside her, but then Asami gently put her hand atop Mako's, and Mako stayed put while Korra continued her rant.

            "You think telling us all this makes you a good person?" She shouted, and now she was making eye contact. Anger radiated off of her in terrifying waves that rolled through the earth and smashed into him like boulders. Bolin wanted to curl up, but he couldn't. He had to face this. If he couldn't face it, he'd never be able to fix it. "You think anything could possibly make up for what you did? You're an awful person, Bolin! You're nothing but a horrible, murdering savage!"

            The silence lasted only long enough for Korra to draw a breath, but in that time Bolin saw everything. Mako looked ready to fight in brotherly protection, had straightened like a board. Asami's eyes were wide and disbelieving. Her posture had shifted so that it looked as though she would stand and intervene. But her hand stayed on Mako's, and at some point Mako had threaded his fingers between hers. Their hands were clasped tightly together. It was like they were holding each other in check.

            "You think you can do what you did, come back here, and have things be okay? You think you could use me like you did? All those people you killed in Fire Fountain City? Maybe you should've just killed _yourself_ , Bolin. It would've saved us all a lot of trouble."

            That was as much as Asami and Mako could take. Both of them were on their feet at once, and both of them yelled Korra's name like they were scolding a dog. But Korra was already marching toward the door, her face tilted downward and her shoulders up around her chin. Bolin couldn't decide if she was more ashamed or angry.

            She didn't make it past him.

            Bolin wasn't sure what possessed him to reach out and catch Korra by the arm, but he did it all the same and the second his hand touched her elbow, everything stopped dead. Mako and Asami went deathly quiet. Korra halted on the spot and turned her eyes on him. It felt as though the world would shatter at any second, at the slightest breath or the tiniest misstep. The silence was brittle and horrible, but Bolin didn't shy away. If he couldn't face this now, he'd never be able to fix it.

            "Maybe you're right," Bolin said quietly, barely above a whisper. His voice was more even than he imagined it would be. "Maybe I should have, but that's not why I came here. I didn't come here to apologize and I didn't come here to win you all back. I didn't come here because I thought it would make you feel any different about me. I came here because I can help you all, all three of you, and because it's important to me that you know the facts. Whether you like it or not doesn't make much difference to me, but I know you've been planning a trip to one of the Society's bases. Asami told me about that much. And I know you've based all your planning on information you got from that combustion bender. Mako told me that. Well, I'm telling you his information is bogus, and that if you really want to bring these people down, you need to go to the Hudayao Islands because I guarantee that's where you're going to find the guy you're looking for, and if you're going to send the United Forces anywhere, they need to go to Chalang City."

            Brittle, horrible silence.

            "I was trying to be up front with you all by being honest about myself, because it's the right thing to do and because I need to do the right thing. If I don't do the right thing for the sake of doing the right thing then none of the work I've done over the last year trying to fix myself means anything at all. I told you for me, for my own sake, Korra, not because I thought it would earn me some kind of credit. Maybe I'm stupid and maybe I'm brain damaged, maybe I am a horrible, murdering savage, but I'm not dumb enough to think that anything I could say could ever fix this. I'm not dumb enough to think that admitting that I know what you're feeling and know when you're lying to me could do anything but complicate this whole situation. But I did it anyway. Now, you can stand here and tell me what a bad person I am and that I'm a soulless butcher, and you can tell me that I should've killed myself when I was thinking about it, whatever, you're right on pretty much every count, but I hope you have enough decency to consider what I told you for Mako and Asami's sakes, because they're the ones who are going to be behind you when you barrel headfirst into a trap that you fell for because you believed a psychopath that almost crushed me to death instead of believing me."

            Korra looked thunderstruck. Her eyes were as wide as Asami's had been, but there was no confusion behind them. More than that, all her anger had fallen away and left nothing in its wake. She felt empty. She looked empty.

            He was still holding her by the elbow, a gentle touch he hadn't realized he'd maintained for so long. He'd been holding her like that the whole time.

            At the moment Bolin turned his attention to Mako and Asami, they looked the same way Korra did: stupefied. The moment they realized he was looking at them, they woke back up. Asami blinked several times, very hard and very fast, and Mako's face darkened with confusion and misunderstanding. It was a look that made Bolin feel like an alien.

            "I'm going to leave you guys alone," Bolin said. "You need to talk."

            He let go Korra's arm, and then he left before anyone could utter a word.


End file.
